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Irish  Books  and  Irish  People 


IRISH  BOOKS 
AND  IRISH  PEOPLE 

By 

STEPHEN  QWYNN^^ 


NEW  YORK: 
FREDERICK  A,  STOKES  COMPANY 

PUBLISHERS 


AOST9N  G0L]L,E|8B*!tfiBABKif 


Printed  at 

The  Talbot  Press,  I^td. 

89  Talbot  Street 

Dublia 


4'i6«'' 


Contents 

■t 

Page 
INTRODUCTION  -  -  -  -        1 

NOVELS  OF  IRISH  LIFE  IN  THE  NINETEENTH  CENTURY  -        7 

A  CENTURY  OF  IRISH  HUMOUR     -  -  -     23 

LITERATURE  AMONG  THE  ILLITERATES  : 

I.— THE  SHANACHY 

II. — THE  LIFE  OF  A  SONG    - 

IRISH  EDUCATION  AND  IRISH  CHARACTER      -  -     65 

THE  IRISH  GENTRY       -  -  -  -     83  ^^ 

YESTERDAY  IN  IRELAND  -  -  -     97 


44 
51 


INTRODUCTION. 

Y  publisher  must  take  at  least  some  of  the 
responsibihty  for  reviving  these  essays. 
All  bear  the  marks  of  the  period  at  which 
they  were  written ;  and  some  of  them  deal 
with  the  beginnings  of  movements  which 
have  since  grown  to  much  greater  strength,  and  in 
growing  have  developed  new  characteristics  at  the 
expense  of  what  was  originally  more  prominent. 
Other  pages,  again,  tcike  no  account  of  facts  which  to- 
day must  be  present  to  the  mind  of  every  Irish  reader, 
and  so  are,  perhaps  significantly,  out  of  date.  Nobody 
for  instance,  could  now  complain  that  Irish  humour  is 
lacking  in  seriousness.  Synge  disposed  of  that  criti- 
cism— and,  indeed,  the  Abbey  Theatre  in  its  tone  as 
a  whole  may  be  accused  of  neglecting  Ireland's  gift 
for  simple  fun.  Yet  Lady  Gregory  made  the  most  of 
it  in  her  *'  Spreading  the  News,*'  and  Mr.  Yeats  in  his 
**  Pot  of  Broth." — How  beautifully  W.  G,  Fay  inter- 
preted an  Irish  laughter  which  had  no  bitterness  in  it. 
But  the  strong  intellectual  movement  which  has 
swept  over  Ireland  has  been  both  embittering  and  em- 
bittered. These  last  five  and  twenty  years  have  been 
the  most  formative  in  the  country's  history  of  any  since 
Ireland  became  the  composite  nation  that  she  now  is, 
or,  perhaps,  has  yet  to  become.  At  the  back  of  it  all 
lies  the  great  social  change  involved  in  the  transfer  of 
ownership  from  the  landlord  to  the  cultivators  of  the 


2         IRISH  BOOKS  AND  IRISH  PEOPLE 

soil — a  change  which  has  Hterally  disenserfed  three- 
fourths  of  Ireland's  people.  Yet  the  relations  are 
obscure,  indefinite,  and  intangible,  which  unite  that 
material  result  to  the  outcome  of  two  forces,  allied  but 
distinct,  which  have  operated  solely  on  men's  minds 
and  spirits.  These  are,  of  course,  the  Gaelic  revival 
and  the  whole  literciry  movement  which  has  had  its 
most  concrete  expression  in  the  Irish  theatre,  and  its 
most  potent  inspiration  in  the  personalrty  of  Mr,  Yeats. 

Of  these  two  forces,  one  can  show  by  far  the  more 
tangible  effects,  for  the  Gaelic  League  has  issued  in 
action.  Setting  out  to  revive  and  save  the  Irish  lan- 
guage as  a  living  speech,  the  instrument  of  a  nation's 
intercourse,  it  has  failed  of  its  purpose ;  but  it  has  re- 
vived and  rendered  potent  the  principle  of  separation. 
Nationalist,  it  will  have  nothing  to  do  with  a  nationa- 
lity that  is  not  as  plainly  marked  off  from  other 
nationalities  as  a  red  lamp  from  a  green  lamp ;  and  the 
essential  symbol  of  separate  nationality  is  for  orthodox 
Gaelic  Leaguers  a  separate  language .  America ,  said  an 
able  exponent  of  this  doctrine  the  other  day  in  a  public 
debate,  will  never  and  never  can  be  a  nation  till  its 
language  is  no  longer  recognisable  as  English — till  its 
English  differs  as  much  from  the  language  of  England 
as  German  differs  from  Dutch.  An  inevitable  corol- 
lary to  this  view  is  the  necessity  for  complete  political 
separadon  from  Great  Britain — if  only  to  provide  the 
machinery  for  this  complete  differentiation  by  daily 
speech. 

I  cannot  pretend  to  assess  impartially  the  value  of 
this  movement.  It  asserted  itself  in  passionate 
deeds  at  a  moment  when  many  thousands  of 
us      Nationalists      were      taking      equally      vigorous 


INTRODUCTION  3 

action  in  pursuit  of  a  less  tribal  ideal.  Thou- 
sands of  us  lost  our  lives,  all  of  us  risked  our 
lives,  with  the  hope  of  achieving  a  national  unity  which 
could  never  be  built  on  the  basis  of  regarding  no  man 
as  an  Irishman  who  did  not  speak,  or  at  least  desire  to 
speak,  Gaelic  for  his  mother  tongue.  The  action  of 
Irish  soldiers  was  thwarted  and  frustrated  by  the  action 
of  a  very  few  separatists,  with  a  very  small  expense  to 
themselves  in  bloodshed.  But  the  tribute  to  the  work 
of  the  Gaelic  League  is  that  Ireland  accepted  them  and 
rejected  us.  None  can  deny  that  it  has  been  a  potent 
stimulus  to  national  education ;  and  it  only  lacks  official 
prohibition  by  the  British  Government  to  become  more 
powerful  still. 

Whatever  the  outcome,  I  take  back  nothing  of  what 
is  written  in  these  papers  concerning  the  Gaelic  revival. 
In  a  country  governed  against  the  will  of  its  people, 
forces  that,  under  normal  and  healthy  conditions, 
would  be  purely  beneficent,  may  easily  grow  explosive 
and  disruptive.  Yet  I  have  not  changed  my  mind  on 
a  critical  question  which  led  me  to  sever  my  connection 
with  the  work  of  the  Gaelic  League.  When  that  body 
decided  to  rely  on  compulsion  rather  than  persuasion, 
it  took  the  wrong  road,  if  its  object  was  to  endear  the 
Irish  language  to  all  Ireland,  and  to  induce  all  Irishmen 
to  cherish  it  as  part  of  the  common  national  heritage. 
As  a  result  Ulstermen  have  a  perfect  right  to  say  that 
if  they  accepted  Home  Rule,  one  of  the  first  steps  of 
an  Irish  government  formed  under  the  present  aus- 
pices would  be  to  demand  a  knowledge  of  Gaelic  as 
the  necessary  qualification  for  holding  any  public 
office. 

I  do  not  believe  that  this  tribal  idealism  which  is 


4         IRISH  BOOKS  AND  IRISH  PEOPLE 

now  so  potent  will  endure.  It  is  out  of  harmony  with 
the  world's  development — a  world  which  in  order  to 
preserve  the  very  principle  of  small  nationalities,  is 
growing  more  and  more  international.  America  is 
not  only  a  nation,  but  is  the  type  of  the  modern  nation 
— bound  together  less  by  what  it  inherits  from  the 
past,  than  by  what  it  hopes  from  the  future. 

The  other  force  which  has  been  operating  through 
these  years  is,  in  a  sense,  obliged  to  give  the  lie  to  the 
pretensions  of  the  Gaelic  League.  Yeats  and  Synge 
have  showed  how  completely  it  is  possible  to  be  Irish 
wfhile  using  the  English  language.  They  have  accepted 
the  fact  that  Ireland  to-day  thinks  in  English,  but  they 
have  endeavoured  to  give  to  Ireland  a  distinctively 
Irish  thought,  coloured  by  the  whole  racial  tradition 
and  temperament.  With  them  has  been  allied 
a  personality  not  less  Irish,  yet  less  obviously 
Irish — **  A.  E.,*'  George  Russell.  Between  them, 
these  writers  and  thinkers  have  profoundly 
influenced  the  mind  of  the  generation  younger 
than  themselves.  It  is  not  possible  to  deny 
that  Ireland's  literary  output  during  those  last  twenty 
years  is  far  more  important  and  serious  than  that  of  the 
whole  preceding  century.  The  only  part  of  it  exempt 
from  these  influences  is  the  work  of  Edith  Somerville 
and  Martin  Ross;  and  even  that  is  based  on  a  closer 
study  of  distinctively  Irish  speech  than  had  ever  been 
attempted  in  earlier  days.  The  propagandist  work  of 
Pearse  and  Arthur  Griffiths — equal  in  merit  to  that  of 
their  forerunners,  Davis  and  Mitchel — was  Irish  only 
in  substance  and  spirit,  not  in  form  or  accent — a  thing 
the  less  surprising,  since  both  men  were  only  half  Irish 
by  parentage.   But  the  whole  group  of  writers,  of  whom 


INTRODUCTION  5 

it  may  be  said  that  their  writings  are  almost  as  unmis- 
takably  Irish   as   the   work    of    Burns  is  Scotch,  have 
followed  Mr.  Yeats  and  Synge  in  this,  that  in  writing 
they  assume  an  Irish  public,  not  an  English  one;  they 
make  no  explanations,   they  speak   as   to   those  who 
share  their  own  inheritance.       In  this  group  has  been 
fostered  a  spirit  of  the  freedom  which  belongs  properly 
to  art.     Thus  the  school,  for  it  may  justly  be  called  a 
school,  has  created  its  own  tradition,  and  it  has  been 
a  tradition  of  freedom,  not  asserted  but  exercised  :  a 
freedom,  not  as  against  England,  but  as  against  all  the 
world.     Everywhere,  but  especially  in  countries  under- 
going revolutionary  change,  there  is  a  tyranny  of  the 
crowd.       When  the  Gaelic  League  decided  to  make 
the  learning  of  Irish   compulsory,    it   attorned  to  this 
tyranny.      On  the  other  hand,  Mr.  Yeats,  at  a  moment 
when   the  Abbey  Theatre   seemed  about  to   become 
popular,      was      threatened      by      a      fiat      of      this 
mob-dictatorship;     he     was     told     that     his     theatre 
must    become    unpopular    unless    he    would    throw 
overboard  most  of  Synge*s  work.     By  the  stand  which 
he  then  made  he  did  a  greater  service  to  freedom  of  the 
mind  in  Ireland  than  has  yet  been  at  all  recognised; 
he   helped  to  make  his  country  fearless  and  strong. 
Thanks  mainly  to  him  and  to  those  who  worked  with 
him,   Ireland's  thought  is  freer  and  more  outspoken; 
there  is  more  thought  in  Ireland  than  there  used  to  be. 
This  does  not  make  the  country  easier  to  govern,  and 
just  now,  Ireland,  if  given  the  opportunity,  would  have 
a   hard    task    to    govern   itself.       But    Ireland   would 
not  be  the  only  country  in  the  world  in  that  predica- 
ment.      The    schoolmaster    has    been    abroad,    and 
where  you  have   education   without  liberty    there   is 


6         IRISH  BOOKS  AND  IRISH  PEOPLE 

bound  to  be  trouble.  The  only  cure  is,  not  to  suppress 
education,  but  to  give  the  responsibihty  of  freedom. 

I  have  left  these  papers  in  order  as  they  were 
written,  with  dates  annexed.  One  of  them,  Literature 
among  the  illiterates,  was  published  in  an  earlier 
volume.  To-day  and  To-morrow  in  Ireland  which  is 
now  out  of  print.  I  include  it  here,  because  it  com- 
pletes the  companion  essay,  called  The  Life  oj  a  Song. 

My  acknowledgments  are  due  to  the  various  publica- 
tions in  which  they  have  all,  except  the  last,  previously 
appeared. 


Dublin,  March,  1919. 


NOVELS  OF  IRISH  LIFE  IN  THE  NINETEENTH 
CENTURY. 

HAT  Ireland  wants/'  said  an  old  gentle- 
man not  very  long  ago,  **  is  a  Walter 
Scott."  The  remedy  did  not  seem 
very  practical,  since  Walter  Scotts  will 
not  come  to  order,  but  the  point  of  view 
is  worth  noting,  for  there  you  touch  the  central  fact 
about  Irish  literature.  We  desire  a  Walter  Scott  that 
he  may  glorify  our  annals,  popularise  our  legends, 
describe  our  scenery,  and  give  an  attractive  view  of  the 
national  character.  In  short,  we  know  that  Ireland 
possesses  pre-eminently  the  quality  of  picturesqueness, 
and  we  should  like  to  see  it  turned  to  good  account. 
We  want  a  Walter  Scott  to  advertise  Ireland,  and  to 
fill  the  hotels  with  tourists ;  but  as  for  desiring  to 
possess  a  great  novelist  simply  for  the  distinction  of 
the  thing,  probably  no  civilised  people  on  earth  is 
more  indifferent  to  the  matter.  At  present,  indeed, 
a  Walter  Scott,  should  he  appear  in  Ireland,  would  be 
apt  to  have  a  cold  welcome.  To  write  on  anything 
connected  with  Irish  history  is  inevitably  to  offend  the 
Press  of  one  party,  cind  very  probably  of  both.  Lever 
is  less  of  a  caricaturist  than  Dickens,  yet  Dickens  is 
idolised  while  Lever  has  been  bitterly  blamed  for 
lowering  Irish  character  in  the  eyes  of  the  world;  the 
charge  is  even  repeated  in  the  Dictionary  oj  National 
Biography.  That  may  be  patriotic  sentiment,  but  it 
is  not  criticism. 


8         IRISH  BOOKS  AND  IRISH  PEOPLE 

Literature  in  Ireland,  in  short,  is  almost  inextricably 
connected  with  considerations  foreign  to  art;  it  is 
regarded  as  a  means,  not  as  an  end.  During  the  nine- 
teenth century  the  belief  being  general  among  all 
classes  of  Irish  people  that  the  English  know  nothing 
of  Ireland,  every  book  on  an  Irish  subject  was  judged 
by  the  effect  it  was  likely  to  have  upon  English  opinion, 
to  which  the  Irish  are  naturally  sensitive,  since  it 
decides  the  most  important  Irish  questions.  But  apart 
from  this  practical  aspect  of  the  matter,  there  is  a 
morbid  national  sensitiveness  which  desires  to  be  con- 
sulted. Ireland,  though  she  ought  to  count  herself 
amply  justified  of  her  children,  is  still  complaining  that 
she  is  misunderstood  among  the  nations;  she  is  for 
ever  crying  out  for  someone  to  give  her  keener  sym- 
pathy, fuller  appreciation,  and  exhibit  herself  and  her 
grievances  to  the  world  in  a  true  light.  The  result  is 
that  kind  of  insincerity  and  special  pleading  which  has 
been  the  curse  of  Irish  or  Anglo-Irish  literature.  I 
write  of  a  literature  which  has  its  natural  centre  in 
Dublin,  not  in  Connemara;  which  looks  eastward,  not 
westward.  That  literature  begins  with  the  Drapier 
Letters:  it  continues  through  the  great  line  of  orators 
in  whom  the  Irish  genius  (we  say  nothing  of  the  Celtic) 
has  found  its  highest  expression;  and  it  produced  its 
first  novelist,  perhaps  also  its  best,  in  the  unromantic 
person  of  Maria  Edgeworth. 

Miss  Edgeworth  had  a  sound  instinct  for  her  art, 
disfigured  though  her  later  writings  are  by  what 
Madame  de  Stael  called  her  triste  utilite.  Her  first 
story  is  her  most  artistic  production.  Castle  Rac\rent 
is  simply  a  pleasant  satire  upon  the  illiterate  and 
improvident  gentry  who  have  always  been  too  common 


NOVELS  OF  IRISH  LIFE  9 

in  her  country.  In  this  book  she  holds  no  brief;  she 
never  stops  to  preach;  her  moral  is  impHed,  not 
expressed.  A  historian  might,  it  is  true,  go  to  Castle 
Rackrent  for  information  about  the  conditions  of  land 
tenure  as  well  as  about  social  life  in  the  Ireland  of  that 
day;  but  the  erudition  is  part  and  parcel  of  her  story. 
Throughout  the  length  and  breadth  of  Ireland,  setting 
aside  great  towns,  the  main  interest  of  life  for  all  classes 
is  the  possession  of  land.  Irish  peasants  seldom  marry 
for  love,  they  never  murder  for  love;  but  they  marry 
and  they  murder  for  land.  To  know  something  of  the 
land-question  is  indispensable  for  an  Irish  novelist,  and 
Miss  Edgeworth  graduated  with  honours  in  this 
subject.  She  was  her  father's  agent ;  when  her  brother 
succeeded  to  the  property  she  resigned,  but  in  the 
troubles  of  1830  she  was  recalled  t6  the  management, 
and  saved  the  estate.  Castle  Rackrent  is,  therefore, 
like  Gait's  Annals  oj  the  Parish,  a  historical  document ; 
but  it  is  none  the  worse  story  for  that.  The  narrative 
is  put  dramatically  into  the  mouth  of  old  Thady,  a 
lifelong  servant  of  the  family.  Thady 's  son,  Jason 
Quirk,  attorney  and  agent  to  the  estate,  has  dispos- 
sessed the  Rackrents;  but  Thady  is  still  **  poor 
Thady,"  and  regards  the  change  with  horror.  Before 
recounting  the  history  of  his  own  especial  master  and 
patron,  Sir  Condy  Rackrent,  last  of  the  line,  Thady 
gives  his  ingenuous  account  of  the  three  who  previously 
bore  the  name;  Sir  Patrick,  Sir  Murtagh,  and  Sir  Kit. 
Sir  Patrick,  the  inventor  of  raspberry  whiskey,  died  at 
table  :  **  Just  as  the  company  rose  to  drink  his  health 
with  three  cheers,  he  fell  down  in  a  sort  of  fit,  and  was 
carried  off;  they  sat  it  out,  and  were  surprised  in  the 
morning  to  find  that  it  was  all  over  with  poor  Sir 
£ 


10       IRISH  BOOKS  AND  IRISH  PEOPLE 

Patrick."  That  no  gentleman  likes  to  be  disturbed 
after  dinner,  was  the  best  recognised  rule  of  life  in 
Ireland ;  if  your  host  happened  to  have  a  fit,  you  knew 
he  would  wish  you  to  sit  it  out.  Gerald  Griffin  in  The 
Collegians  makes  the  same  point  with  his  usual  vigour. 
A  shot  is  heard  in  the  dining-room  by  the  maids  down- 
stairs. They  are  for  rushing  in,  but  the  manservant 
knows  better  :  **  Sure,  don't  you  know,  if  there  was 
anyone  shot  the  master  would  ring  the  bell."  After 
Sir  Patrick,  who  thus  lived  and  died,  to  quote  his 
epitaph,  **  a  monument  of  old  Irish  hospitality,"  came 
Sir  Murtagh,  "  who  was  a  very  learned  man  in  the 
law,  and  had  the  character  of  it  "  ;  another  passion  that 
seems  to  go  with  the  land-hunger  in  Ireland.  Sir 
Murtagh  married  one  of  the  family  of  the  Skinflints  : 
**  She  was  a  strict  observer  for  self  and  servants  of  Lent 
and  all  fast  days,  but  not  holidays."  However,  says 
Thady  (is  there  not  a  strong  trace  of  Swift  in  all  this?), 

**  However,  my  lady  was  very  charitable  in  her  own 
way.  She  had  a  charity  school  for  poor  children, 
where  they  were  taught  to  read  and  write  gratis,  and 
where  they  were  well  kept  to  spinning  gratis  for  my 
lady  in  return ;  for  she  had  always  heaps  of  duty  yarn 
from  the  tenants,  and  got  all  her  household  linen  out 
of  the  estate  from  first  to  last ;  for  after  the  spinning, 
the  weavers  on  the  estate  took  il;  in  hand  for  nothing, 
because  of  the  looms  my  lady's  interest  could  get  from 
the  Linen  Board  to  distribute  gratis.  .  .  .  Her 
table  the  same  way,  kept  for  next  to  nothing;  duty 
fowls,  and  duty  turkeys,  and  duty  geese  came  as  fast 
as  we  could  eat  them,  for  my  lady  kept  a  sharp  look- 
out and  knew  to  a  tub  of  butter  everything  the  tenants 
had  all  round.     ...     As  for  their  young  pigs,  we 


NOVELS  OF  IRISH  LIFE  11 

had  them,  and  the  best  bacon  and  hams  they  could 
make  up,  with  all  young  chickens  in  the  spring;  but 
they  were  a  set  of  poor  wretches,  and  v/e  had  nothing 
but  misfortunes  with  them,  always  breaking  and  run- 
ning away.  This,  Sir  Murtagh  and  my  lady  said,  was 
all  their  former  landlord.  Sir  Patrick's  fault,  who  let 
'em  get  the  half  year's  rent  into  arrear ;  there  was  some- 
thing in  that,  to  be  sure.  But  Sir  Murtagh  was  as 
much  the  contrary  way " 

I  have  abridged  my  lady's  methods,  and  I  omit  Sir 
Murtagh's,  v/ho  taught  his  tenants,  as  he  said,  to  know 
the  law  of  landlord  and  tenant.  But,  '*though  a 
learned  man  in  the  law,  he  was  a  little  too  incredulous 
in  other  matters."  He  neglected  his  health,  broke  a 
blood-vessel  in  a  rage  with  my  lady,  and  so  made  way 
for  Sir  Kit  the  prodigal.  Sir  Kit  was  shot  in  a  duel, 
and  Sir  Condj^  came  into  an  estate  which,  between  Sir 
Murtagh's  law-suits  and  Sir  Kit's  gaming,  was  con- 
siderably embarrassed;  indeed,  the  story  proper  is 
simply  a  history  of  makeshifts  to  keep  rain  and  bailiffs 
out  of  the  family  mansion.  Poor  Sir  Condy;  he 
was  the  very  moral  of  the  man  who  is  no  man's  enemy 
but  his  own,  and  was  left  at  the  last  with  no  friend  but 
old  Thady.  Even  Judy  Quirk  turned  against  him,  for- 
getting his  goodness  in  tossing  up  between  her  and 
Miss  Isabella  Moneygawl,  the  romantic  lady  who 
eloped  with  him  after  the  toss.  She  deserted  before 
Judy ;  here  is  a  bit  of  the  final  scene.  Thady  was  going 
upstairs  with  a  slate  to  make  up  a  window-pane. 

**  This  window  was  in  the  long  passage,  or  gallery, 
as  my  lady  gave  orders  to  have  it  called,  in  the  gallery 


12       IRISH  BOOKS  AND  IRISH  PEOPLE 

leading  up  to  my  master's  bedchamber  and  hers.  And 
when  I  went  up  with  the  slate,  the  door  having  no  lock, 
and  the  bolt  spoilt,  was  ajar  after  Mrs.  Jane  (my  lady's 
maid),  and  as  I  was  busy  with  the  window,  I  heard  all 
that  was  saying  within.  *  Well,  what's  in  your  letter, 
Bella,  my  dear?  '  says  he.  *  You're  a  long  time  spell- 
ing it  over.'  '  Won't  you  shave  this  morning.  Sir 
Condy?'  says  she,  and  put  the  letter  into  her  pocket. 
*I  shaved  the  day  before  yesterday,'  says  he,  *  my  dear, 
and  that's  not  what  I'm  thinking  of  now;  but  anything 
to  oblige  you,  and  to  have  peace  and  quietness,  my 
dear,' — and  presently  I  had  the  glimpse  of  him  at  the 
cracked  glass  over  the  chimney-piece,  standing  up 
shaving  himself  to  please  my  lady." 

However,  the  quarrel  comes  on  in  a  delightful  scene, 
where  Sir  Condy  shows  himself  at  all  events  an  ami- 
able gentleman ;  and  so  my  lady  goes  home  to  her  own 
people.  There  you  have  Miss  Edgeworth  at  her  very 
best;  and,  indeed,  Castle  Rac\rent  received  such  a 
tribute  as  no  other  novel  ever  had  paid  to  it.  Many 
people  have  heard  how  when  Waverley  came  to  the 
Edgeworth  household,  Mr.  Edgeworth,  after  his 
custom,  read  it  aloud  almost,  as  it  would  appear,  at 
one  sitting.  When  the  end  came  for  that  fascinated 
circle,  amid  the  chorus  of  exclamations,  Mr.  Edge- 
worth  said:  **  What  is  this?  Postscript  which  ought 
to  have  been  a  preface/*  Then  there  was  a  chorus  of 
protests  that  he  should  not  break  the  spell  with  prose. 
**  Anyhow,"  he  said,  **  let  us  hear  what  the  man  has 
to  say,"  and  so  read  on  to  the  passage  where  Scott 
explained  that  he  desired  to  do  for  Scotland  what  had 
been  done  for  Ireland:  **  to  emulate  the  admirable 
fidehty  of  Miss  Edgeworth's  portraits."     What  Maria 


NOVELS  OF  IRISH  LIFE  13 

Edgeworth  felt  we  know  from  the  letter  she  posted  off 
**  to  the  Author  of  *  Waverley,*  Aut  Scotus  aut 
Diabolus.'* 

It  would  be  unkind  to  compare  Scott  with  his  model. 
For  the  poetry  and  the  tragic  power  of  his  novels  one 
would  never  think  of  looking  in  Miss  Edgeworth.  Her 
work  is  compact  of  observation;  yet  the  gifts  she  has 
are  not  to  be  under- valued.  She  is  mistress  of  a  kindly 
yet  searching  satire,  real  wit,  a  fine  vein  of  comedy; 
and  she  can  rise  to  such  true  pathos  as  dignifies  the 
fantastic  figure  of  King  Corny  in  Orniond,  perhaps  the 
best  thing  she  ever  did.  But  she  had  in  her  father  a 
literary  adviser,  not  of  the  negative  but  of  the  positive 
order,  and  there  never  was  a  more  fully  developed 
prig  than  Richard  Edgeworth.  His  view  of  literature 
was  purely  utilitarian ;  to  convey  practical  lessons  was 
the  business  of  all  superior  persons,  more  particularly 
of  an  Edgeworth.  In  Castle  Rackrent  his  suggestions 
and  comments  are  happily  relegated  to  the  position  of 
notes ;  in  the  other  books  they  form  part  and  parcel  of 
the  novel.  The  Absentee,  for  instance,  contains 
admirable  dialogue  and  many  life-like  figures ;  but  the 
scheme  of  the  story  conveys  a  sense  of  unreality. 
Every  fault  or  vice  has  its  counterbalancing  virtue 
represented.  Lady  Clonbroney,  vulgarly  ashamed  of 
her  country,  is  set  off  by  the  patriotic  Lady  Oranmore ; 
the  virtuous  Mr.  Burke  forms  too  obvious  a  pendant  to 
the  rascally  agents  old  Nick  and  St.  Dennis.  It  is 
needless  to  say  that  the  exclusively  virtuous  people  are 
deadly  dull.  It  is  the  novel  with  a  purpose  written  by 
a  novelist  whose  strength  lies  in  the  delineation  of 
character.  Miss  Edgeworth  can  never  carry  you  away 
with  her  story,  as  Charles  Reade  sometimes  can,  and 
make  you  forget  and  forgive  the  virtuous  intention. 


14       IRISH  BOOKS  AND  IRISH  PEOPLE 

What  was  unreal  in  Miss  Edgeworth  became  mere 
insincerity  in  her  contemporary,  Lady  Morgan.  Few 
people  could  tell  you  now  where  Thackeray  got  Miss 
Glorvina  O'Dowd's  baptismal  name;  yet  The  Wild 
Irish  Girl  had  a  great  triumph  in  its  day,  and  Glorvina 
stood  sponsor  to  the  milliners'  and  haberdashers' 
inventions  ninety  years  before  the  apotheosis  of  Trilby. 
O'Donnell,  which  is  counted  Lady  Morgan's  best 
novel,  gives  a  lively  ideal  portrait  of  the  authoress, 
first  as  the  governess-grub,  then  transformed  by 
marriage  into  the  butterfly-duchess.  But  the  book  is 
a  thinly-disguised  political  pamphlet,  *'  Look,"  she 
says  in  effect,  **at  the  heroic  virtues  of  O'Donnell,  the 
young  Irishman,  driven  to  serve  in  foreign  armies, 
despoiled  of  his  paternal  estates  by  the  penal  laws ; 
look  at  the  fidelity,  the  simplicity,  the  native  humour 
(so  dramatically  effective)  of  his  servant  Rory;  and 
then  say  if  you  will  not  plump  for  Catholic  Emancipa- 
tion." **  My  dear  lady,"  the  reader  murmurs,  **  I 
wondered  why  you  were  so  set  upon  underlining  all 
these  things.  Can  you  not  tell  us  a  story  frankly,  and 
let  us  alone  with  your  conclusions)" 

Unfortunately,  very  much  the  same  has  to  be  said  of 
a  far  greater  writer,  William  Carleton,  even  in  those 
tales  which  are  based  upon  his  own  most  intimate 
experience.  The  Poor  Scholar,  his  most  popular 
story,  proceeds  directly  from  an  episode  in  his  own 
life.  He  had  himself  been  a  poor  scholar,  had  set  out 
from  his  northern  home  to  walk  to  Munster,  where  the 
best  known  schools  were,  trusting  to  charity  by  the 
way  to  lodge  him,  and  to  charity  to  keep  him  through- 
out his  schooling  for  the  sake  of  his  vocation,  and  for 
the  blessing  sure  to  descend  upon  those  who  aided  a 


NOVELS  OF  IRISH  LIFE  15 

peasant's  son  to  become  a  priest.  Nothing  could  be 
more  vivid  than  the  early  scenes,  the  collection  made 
at  the  altar  for  Jimmy  McEvoy,  the  priest's  sermon, 
the  boy's  parting  from  home,  and  the  roadside  hospi- 
tality; there  is  one  infinitely  touching  episode  in  the 
house  of  the  first  farmer  who  shelters  him.  Then 
come  the  school  itself,  and  the  tyranny  of  its  master, 
till  the  boy  falls  sick  of  a  fever,  and  is  turned  out  of 
doors.  Then,  alas,  the  conventional  intervenes  in 
the  person  of  the  virtuous  absentee  ignorant  of  his 
agent's  misdoings :  the  long  arm  of  coincidence  is 
stretched  to  the  uttermost;  and  we  have  to  wade 
through  pages  of  discussion  upon  the  relations  of  land- 
lord and  tenant  till  we  are  put  wholly  out  of  tune  for 
the  beautiful  scene  of  Jimmy's  return  home  in  his 
priestly  dress. 

Carleton  did  for  the  peasantry  what  Miss  Edgeworth 
had  done  for  the  upper  classes.        In   her  books  the 
peasants    have    only    an    incidental    part,    and    she 
describes  them  shrewdly  and  sympathetically  enough, 
but  with  a  mind  untouched  either  by  their  faith  or  by 
their  superstitions ;  seeing  their  good  and  bad  qualities 
clearly  in  a  dry  light,  but  never  in  imagination  identify- 
ing herself  with  them.     Superior  to  Miss  Edgeworth 
in  power  and  insight,  he  is  immeasurably  her  inferior 
in  literary  skill.     One  should  remember,  in  comment- 
ing upon  the  poverty  of   Irish   literature   in  English, 
that,  so  far  as  concerns  imaginative  work,  it  began  in 
the  nineteenth  century.     Carleton  only  died  in   1869, 
Miss  Edgeworth  in  1 849 ;  and  before  them  there  is  no 
one. 

On  the  other  hand  the  speech  of  Lowland  Scots,  with 
whose  richness  in  masterpieces  our  poverty  is  naturally 


16       IRISH  BOOKS  AND  IRISH  PEOPLE 

contrasted,  has  been  employed  for  literature  as  long  as 
the  vernacular  English.       A  king   of  Scotland  wrote 
admirable  verse  in  the  generation  after  Chaucer;  the 
influence  of  the  Court  fostered  poetry,   and  the  close 
intercourse  with  France  kept  Scotch  writers  in  touch 
with  first-rate  models.     Dunbar,  strolling  as  a  friar  in 
France,  may  have  known  Villon,  whom  he  often  re- 
sembles.    In  Ireland,  till  a  century  ago,  English  was 
as  much  a  foreign  language  as  Norman  French  in  Eng- 
land under   the  Plantagenets.       Among   the  English 
Protestants,  settled  in  Ireland,  and  separated  by  a  hard 
line  of  cleavage  from  the   Catholic  population,  there 
arose     great      men     in     letters.      Goldsmith,   Burke, 
Sheridan,     who     showed     their     Irish     temperament 
in     their     handling     of     English     themes.       But     in 
Ireland       itself,       before       the       events       of       1782 
added  importance  to  Dublin,  there  was  no  centre  for  a 
literature   to  gather  round.        Such   national  pride  as 
exists  in  English-speaking  Ireland  dates  from  the  days 
of  Grattan  and  Flood.     And  Irish  national  aspirations 
still  bear  the  impress  of  their  origin  amid  that  period 
of  political  turmoil,  than  which  nothing  is  more  hostile 
to  the  brooding  care  of  literary  workmanship,  the  long 
labour  and   the  slow    result.     Irishmen   have  always 
shown  a  strong  disinclination  to  pure  literature.     The 
roll  of  Irish  novelists  is  more  than  half  made  up  of 
women's  names;  Miss  Edgeworth,  Lady  Morgan,  Miss 
Emily   Lawless,    and  Miss  Jane   Barlow.     Journalists 
Ireland   has    produced    as   copiously    as    orators;   the 
writers   of   The  Spirit  oj  the   Nation,   that  admirable 
collection  of  stirring  poems,  are  journalists  working  in 
verse;    and    Carleton,    falling    under    their   influence, 
became  a  journalist  working  in  fiction.     In  his  pages. 


NOVELS  OF  IFUSH  LIFE  17 

even  when  the  debater  ceases  to  argue  and  harangue, 
the  style  is  still  journalistic,  except  in  those  passages 
where  his  dramatic  instinct  puts  living  speech  into  the 
mouths  of  men  and  women.  Politics  so  monopolise 
the  minds  of  Irishmen,  newspapers  so  make  up  their 
whole  reading,  that  the  class  to  which  Carle  ton  and 
the  poet  Mangan  belonged  have  never  fully  entered 
upon  the  heritage  of  English  literature.  If  an  English 
peasant  knows  nothing  else,  he  knows  the  Bible  and 
very  likely  Bunyan ;  but  a  Roman  Catholic  population 
has  little  commerce  with  that  pure  fountain  of  style. 
Genius  cannot  dispense  with  models,  and  Carleton  and 
Mangan  had  the  worst  possible.  Yet  when  it  has 
been  said  that  Carleton  was  a  half -educated  peasant, 
writing  in  a  language  whose  best  literature  he  had  not 
sufficiently  assimilated  to  feel  the  true  value  of  words, 
it  remains  to  be  said  that  he  was  a  great  novelist.  He 
cannot  be  fairly  illustrated  by  quotation ;  but  read  any 
of  his  stories  and  see  if  he  does  not  bring  up  vividly 
before  you  Ireland  as  it  was  before  the  famine ;  Ireland 
still  swarming  with  beggars  who  marched  about  in 
families  subsisting  chiefly  on  the  charity  of  the  poor; 
Ireland  of  which  the  hedge-school  was  plainly  to  him 
the  most  characteristic  institution. 

Carleton  does  not  stand  by  himself;  he  is  the  head 
and  representative  of  a  whole  class  of  Irish  novelists, 
among  whom  John  Banim  is  the  best  known  name. 
All  of  them  were  peasants  who  aimed  at  depicting 
scenes  of  peasant  life  from  their  own  experience. 
What  one  may  call  the  melodramatic  Irish  story,  in 
which  Lever  was  so  brilliantly  successful,  has  its  first 
famous  example  in  The  Collegians  of  Gerald  Griffin. 
The  novel  has  no  concern  with  college  life,  and  is  far 


18       IRISH  BOOKS  AND  IRISH  PEOPLE 

better  described  by  its  stage- title,  The  Colleen  Baton. 
Here  at  least  is  a  man  with  a  story  to  tell  and  no  object 
but  to  tell  it.  Griffin  belonged  to  the  lay  order  of 
Christian  Brothers  :  his  book  deals  principally  with  a 
society  no  more  familiar  to  him  than  was  the  household 
of  Mr.  Rochester  to  Charlotte  Bronte ;  and  his  method 
recalls  the  Brontes  by  its  strenuous  imagination  and  its 
vehement  painting  of  passion.  The  tale  was  suggested 
by  a  murder  which  excited  all  Ireland.  A  young 
southern  squire  carried  off  a  girl  with  some  m.oney, 
and  procured  her  death  by  drowning.  He  was  arrested 
at  his  mother's  house  and  a  terrible  scene  took  place, 
terribly  rendered  in  the  book.  Griffin,  of  course, 
changes  the  motive ;  the  girl  is  carried  off  not  for  money 
but  for  love,  and  she  is  sacrificed  to  make  way  for  a 
stronger  passion.  Eily  O'Connor,  the  victim,  is  a 
pretty  and  pathetic  figure:  the  hero-villain  Hardress 
Cregan,  and  the  mother  who  indirectly  causes  the 
crime,  are  effective  though  melodramatic;  but  the 
actual  murderer,  Danny  the  Lord,  Hardress  Cregan's 
familiar,  is  worthy  of  Scott  or  Hugo. 

In  his  sketches  of  society,  Hyland  Creagh,  the  duel- 
list, old  Cregan,  and  the  rest.  Griffin  is  describing  a 
state  of  affairs  previous  to  his  own  experience,  the 
Ireland  of  Sir  Jonah  Barrington's  memoirs;  he  is  not, 
as  were  Carleton  and  Miss  Edgeworth,  copying  min- 
utely from  personal  observation.  Herein  he  resembles 
Lever  who,  when  all  is  said  and  done,  remains  the 
chief,  as  he  is  the  most  Irish,  of  Irish  novelists.  It  is 
true  that  Lever  had  two  distinct  manners:  and  in  his 
later  books  he  deals  chiefly  with  contemporary  society, 
drawing  largely  on  his  experiences  of  diplomatic  life. 


NOVELS  OF  IRISH  LIFE  19 

Like  most  novelists  he  preferred  his  later  work;  but 
the  books  by  which  he  is  best  known,  Harry  Lorrequer 
and  the  rest,  are  his  earliest  productions;  and  though 
his  maturer  skill  was  employed  on  different  subjects, 
he  formed  his  imagination  in  studies  of  the  Napoleonic 
Wars    and    of    a    duelling,     drinking,    bailiff-beating 
Ireland.     His  point  of   view  never  altered,    and   the 
peculiar  attraction  of  his  writings  is  always  the  same. 
Lever's  books  have  the  quality  rather  of  speech  than 
of   writing;   wherever    you   open   the    pages   there    is 
always  a  witty,  well-informed  Irishman  discoursing  to 
you,  who  tells  his  story  admirably,  when  he  has  one  to 
tell,  and,  failing  that,  never  fails  to  be  pleasant.     Irish 
talk   is  apt  to   be  discursive;   to  rely  upon  a  general 
charm  diffused  through  the  whole,  rather  thcin  upon 
any  quotable  brilliancy ;  its  very  essence  is  spontaneity, 
high    spirits,    fertility    of    resource.       That    is    a   fair 
description  of  Lever.     He  is   never  at  a  loss.     If  his 
story  hangs,  off  he  goes  at  score  with  a  perfectly  irrele- 
vant  anecdote,   but   told  with  such  enjoyment  of  the 
joke  that  you  cannot  resent  the  digression.     Indeed  the 
plots  are  left  pretty  much  to  take  care  of  themselves; 
he  positively  preferred  to  write  his  stories  in  monthly 
instalments  for  a  magazine;  he  is  not  a  conscientious 
artist,  but  he  lays  himself  out  to  amuse  you,   and  he 
does  it.     If  he  advertises  a  character  as  a  wit,  he  does 
not  labour  phrases  to  describe  his  brilliancy;  he  pro- 
duces the  witticisms.     He  has  been  accused  of  exag- 
geration.    As  regards  the  incidents,  one  can  only  say 
that  the  memoirs  of  Irish  society  at  the  beginning  of 
this  century  furnish  at  least  fair  warranty  for  any  of  his 
inventions.     In  character-drawing  he   certainly  over- 
charged the  traits :  but  he  did  so  with  intention,  and  by 


20       IRISH  BOOKS  AND  IRISH  PEOPLE 

consistently  heightening  the  tones  throughout  obtained 
an  artistic  impression,  which  had  life  behind  it,  how- 
ever ingeniously  travestied.  His  stories  have  no  unity 
of  action,  but  through  a  great  diversity  of  characters 
and  incidents  they  maintain  their  unity  of  treatment. 
That  is  not  the  highest  ideal  of  the  novel,  but  it  is  an 
intelligible  one,  not  lacking  famous  examples;  and 
Lever  perfectly  understood  it. 

If  one  wishes  to  realise  how  good  an  artist  Lever 
was,  the  best  way  is  to  read  his  contemporary  Samuel 
Lover.  Handy  Aniy  appeared  somewhat  later  than 
Harry  Lorrequer.  It  is  just  the  difference  between 
good  whiskey  and  bad  whiskey ;  both  are  indigenous 
and  therefore  characteristic,  but  let  us  be  judged  by 
our  best.  Obviously  the  men  have  certain  things  in 
common;  great  natural  vivacity,  and  an  easy  cheerful 
way  of  looking  at  life.  Lover  can  raise  a  laugh,  but 
his  wit  is  horseplay  except  for  a  few  happy  phrases. 
He  has  no  real  comedy;  there  is  nothing  in  Handy 
Andy  half  so  ingenious  as  the  story  in  Jack  Hinton  of 
the  way  Ulick  Bourke  acquitted  himself  of  his  debt  to 
Father  Tom.  And  behind  all  Lever's  conventional 
types  there  is  a  real  fund  of  observation  and  knowledge 
which  is  absolutely  wanting  in  Lover,  who  simply 
lacked  the  brains  to  be  anything  more  than  a  trifler. 

A  very  different  talent  was  that  of  their  younger 
contemporary  J.  Sheridan  Le  Fanu.  The  author  of 
Uncle  Silas  had  plenty  of  solid  power ;  but  his  art  was 
too  highly  specialised.  No  one  ever  succeeded  better 
in  two  main  objects  of  the  story-teller;  first,  in  exciting 
interest,  in  stimulating  curiosity  by  vague  hints  of  some 
dreadful  mystery;  and  then  in  concentrating  attention 
upon  a  dramatic  scene.     It  is  true  that,  although  an 


NOVELS  OF  IRISH  LIFE  21 

Irishman,  he  gained  his  chief  successes  with  stories 
that  had  an  English  setting;  but  one  of  the  best,  The 
House  by  the  Churchyard,  describes  very  vividly  life 
at  Chapelizod  in  the  days  when  this  deserted  little 
village,  which  lies  just  beyond  the  Phoenix  Park,  was 
thickly  peopled  with  the  families  of  officers  stationed 
in  Dublin.  Yet  somehow  one  does  not  carry  away 
from  the  reading  of  it  any  picture  of  that  society;  the 
story  is  so  exciting  that  the  mind  has  no  time  to  rest 
on  details,  but  hurries  on  from  clue  to  clue  till  finally 
and  literally  the  murder  is  out.  Books  which  keep  a 
reader  on  the  tenter-hooks  of  conjecture  must  always 
suffer  from  this  undue  concentration  of  the  interest; 
and  in  spite  of  cheery,  inquisitive  Dr.  Toole,  and  the 
remarkable  sketch  of  Black  Dillon,  the  ruffianly  genius 
with  a  reputation  only  recognised  in  the  hospitals  and 
the  police-courts  (a  character  admirably  invented  and 
admirably  used  in  the  plot)  one  can  hardly  class  Le 
Fanu  among  those  novelists  who  have  left  memorable 
presentments  of  Irish  life.  It  is  a  pity;  for  plainly,  if 
the  man  had  cared  less  for  sensational  incident  and 
ingenious  construction,  he  might  have  sketched  life 
and  character  with  a  strong  brush  and  a  kind  of  grim 
realism 

Realism  Lever  does  not  aim  at ;  he  declines  to  be  on 
his  oath  about  anything.  What  he  gives  one,  vividly 
enough,  is  national  colour,  not  local  colour ;  he  is  essen- 
tially Irish,  just  as  Fielding  is  essentially  English ;  but 
he  aims  at  verisimilitude  rather  than  veracity.  The 
ideal  of  the  novel  has  changed  since  his  day.  Com- 
pare him  with  the  two  ladies  who  stand  out  promi- 
nently among  contemporary  writers  of  Irish  fiction. 
Miss  Jane  Barlow^  and  Miss  Emily  Lawless.     To  begin 


22       IRISH  BOOKS  AND  IRISH  PEOPLE 

with,  Lever's  stories  are  always  concerned  with  the 
QuaHty;  peasants  only  come  in  for  an  underplot,  or  in 
subordinate  parts;  and  the  gentry  all  through  Ireland 
resemble  one  another  within  reasonable  limits.  It  is 
different  with  the  peasantry.  In  every  part  of  Ireland 
you  will  find  people  who  have  never  been  ten  miles 
away  from  the  place  of  their  birth,  and  upon  whom  a 
local  character  is  unmistakably  stamped.  The  con- 
temporary novelists  delight  to  mark  these  differences, 
these  salient  points  of  singularity:  and  their  studies  are 
chiefly  of  the  peasantry.  They  settle  down  upon  some 
little  corner  of  the  country  and  never  stir  out  of  it. 
Miss  Lawless  is  not  content  to  get  you  Irish  character ; 
she  must  show  you  a  Clare  man  or  an  Arran  islander, 
and  she  is  at  infinite  pains  to  point  out  how  his  nature, 
even  his  particular  actions,  are  influenced  by  the  place 
of  his  bringing  up.  Lever  avoids  this  specialisation; 
he  prefers  a  stone  wall  country  for  his  hunting  scenes, 
but  beyond  that  he  goes  no  further  into  details.  Again 
Miss  Lawless  both  in  Crania  and  in  Hurrish  makes 
you  aware  that  young  Irishmen  of  Hurrish*9  class  are 
curiously  indifferent  to  female  beauty.  Lever  will 
have  none  of  that;  his  Irishman  must  be  **  a  divil  with 
the  girls,'*  although  Lever  is  no  sentimentalist,  and  does 
not  talk  of  love  matches  among  the  Irish  peasantry. 

The  greatest  divergence  of  all,  however,  is  in  the 
temper  attributed  to  the  Irish.  Lever  makes  them  gay, 
Miss  Lawless  and  Miss  Barlow  make  them  sad.  No 
one  denies  that  sadness  is  nearer  the  reality,  but  it  is 
unreasonable  to  call  Lever  insincere.  Naturally  care- 
less and  lighthearted  he  does  not  trouble  himself  with 
the  riddle  of  the  painful  world :  the  distress  which 
touches  him  most  nearly  is  a  distress  for  debt.     But  if 


NOVELS  OF  IRISH  LIFE  23 

Lever  is  not  realistic  he  is  natural ;  he  follows  the  law 
of  his  nature  as  an  artist  should;  he  sees  life  through 
his  own  medium;  and  if  books  are  to  be  valued  as 
companions,  not  many  of  them  are  better  company 
than  Charles  O'Malley  or  Lord  Kilgobhin;  for  first  and 
last  Lever  was  always  himself. 

Yet,  I  must  own  it,  it  does  not  do  to  read  Lever  soon 
after  Miss  Barlow.  Her  stories  of  Lisconnel  and  its 
folk  have  a  tragic  dignity  wholly  out  of  his  range.  It 
is  a  sad-coloured  country  she  writes  of,  gray  and 
brown;  bodden  brown  with  bog  water,  gray  with  rock 
cropping  up  through  the  fields ;  the  only  brightness  is 
up  overhead  in  the  heavens,  and  even  they  are  often 
clouded.  These  sombre  hues,  with  the  passing  gleam 
of  something  above  them,  reflect  themselves  in  every 
page  of  her  books.  She  renders  that  complete  har- 
mony between  the  people  and  their  surroundings  which 
is  only  seen  in  working  folk  whose  clothes  are  stained 
with  the  colour  of  the  soil  they  live  by,  and  whose 
lives  assimilate  themselves  to  its  character.  She  has 
a  fineness  of  touch,  a  poetry,  to  which  no  other  Irish 
story-teller  has  attained. 

Yet,  Miss  Barlow  has  xiever  succeeded  with  a  regu- 
lar novel  :  and  she  may  have  been  only  a  forerunner. 
All  great  writers  proceed  from  a  school,  and  there  does 
exist  now  undeniably  a  school  of  Irish  literature  which 
differs  from  Miss  Edge  worth  in  being  strongly  tinged 
with  the  element  of  Celtic  romance,  from  Carleton  in 
possessing  an  admirable  standard  of  style,  and  from 
Lever  in  aiming  at  a  sincere  and  vital  portraiture  of 
Irish  life. 

1897. 


A  CENTURY  OF   IRISH  HUMOUR. 

N  a  preface  to  the  French  translation  of 
Sienkiewicz's  works,  M.  de  Wyzewa, 
the  well-known  critic,  himself  a  Pole, 
makes  a  suggestive  comparison  between 
the  Polish  and  the  Russian  natures.  The 
Pole,  he  says,  is  quicker,  wittier,  more  imaginative, 
more  studious  of  beauty,  less  absorbed  in  the  material 
world  than  the  Russian — in  a  word,  infinitely  more 
gifted  with  the  artistic  temperament;  and  yet  in  every 
art  the  Russian  has  immeasurably  outstripped  the  P;jle. 
His  explanation,  if  not  wholly  convincing,  is  at  least 
suggestive.  The  Poles  are  a  race  of  dreamers,  and 
the  dreamer  finds  his  reward  in  himself.  He  does  not 
seek  to  conquer  the  world  with  arms  or  with  com- 
merce, with  tears  or  with  laughter;  neither  money 
tempts  him  nor  fame,  and  the  strenuous,  unremitting 
application  which  success  demands,  whether  in  war, 
business,  or  the  arts,  is  alien  to  his  being. 

The  same  observation  and  the  same  reasoning  apply 
with  equal  force  to  the  English  and  the  Irish.  No  one 
who  has  lived  in  the  two  countries  will  deny  that  the 
Irish  are  apparently  the  more  gifted  race;  no  one  can 
deny,  if  he  has  knowledge  and  candour,  that  the 
English  have  accomplished  a  great  deal  more,  the 
Irish  a  great  deal  less.  Nowhere  is  this  more  evident 
than  in  the  productions  of  that  faculty  which  Irishmen 
have  always  been  reputed,  and  justly  reputed,  to 
possess  in  peculiar  measure — the  faculty  of  humour. 


A  CENTURY  OF  IRISH  HUMOUR        25 

Compare  Lever,  who  for  a  long  time  passed  as  the 
typical  Irish  humorist,  with  his  contemporaries 
Thackeray  and  Dickens.  The  comparison  is  not  fair, 
but  it  suggests  the  central  fact  that  the  humour  of  Irish 
literature  is  deficient  in  depth,  in  intellectual  quality, 
or,  to  put  it  after  an  Irish  fashion,  in  gravity. 

*  Humorous  *  is  a  word  as  question-begging  as 
*  artistic,'  and  he  would  be  a  rash  man  who  should 
try  to  define  either.  But  so  much  as  this  will  readily 
be  admitted,  that  humour  is  a  habit  of  mind  essentially 
complex,  involving  always  a  double  vision — a  refer- 
ence from  the  public  or  norm.al  standard  of  proportion 
to  one  that  is  private  and  personal.  The  humorist 
refuses  to  part  with  any  atom  of  his  own  personality, 
he  stamps  it  on  whatever  comes  from  him.  *'  If 
reasons  were  as  plenty  as  blackberries,"  says  Falstaff, 
achieving  individuality  by  the  same  kind  of  odd  pic- 
turesque comparison  as  every  witty  Irish  peasant  uses 
in  talk,  to  the  delight  of  himself  and  his  hearers.  But 
the  individuality  lies  deeper  than  phrases;  Falstaff 
takes  his  private  standard  into  battle  with  him.  There 
is  nothing  more  obviously  funny  than  the  short  paunchy 
man,  let  us  not  say  cowardly,  but  disinclined  to  action, 
who  finds  himself  engaged  in  a  fight.  Lever  has  used 
him  a  score  of  times  (beginning  with  Mr.  O'Leary  in 
the  row  at  a  gambling-hell  in  Paris),  and  whether  he 
runs  or  Vv^hether  he  fights,  his  efforts  to  do  either  are 
grotesquely  laughable.  Shakespeare  puts  that  view 
of  Falstaff  too  :  Prince  Hal  words  it.  But  Falstaff,  the 
humorist  in  person,  rises  on  the  field  cf  battle  over  the 
slain  Percy  and  enunciates  his  philosophy  of  the  better 
part  of  valour.  Falstaff *s  estimate  of  honour — **  that 
word  honour  "  '**  Who  hath  it?  he  that  died  o*  Wed- 

c 


26        IRISH  BOOKS  AND  IRISH  PEOPLE 

nesday  Doth  he  feel  it?"),  the  **  grinning  honour'* 
that  Sir  Walter  Blunt  wears  where  the  Douglas  left 
him — is  necessary  to  complete  the  humorist's  vision  of 
a  battle-piece.  Lever  will  scarcely  visit  you  with  such 
reflections,  for  the  humorist  of  Lever's  type  never 
stands  stands  apart  and  smiles ;  he  laughs  loud  and  in 
company.  Still  less  will  he  give  you  one  of  those 
speeches  which  are  the  supreme  achievement  of  this 
faculty,  where  the  speaker's  philosophy  is  not  reas- 
oned out  liked  Falstaff's,  but  revealed  in  a  flash  of  the 
onlooker's  insight.  Is  it  pardonable  to  quote  ^the 
account  cf  Falstaff's  death  as  the  hostess  narrates  it? 

"How  now,  Sir  John,  quoth  I,  what,  man!  be  of  good  cheer. 
So  a'  cried  out  God,  God,  three  or  four  times.  Now  I,  to  comfort 
him,  bid  him  a'  should  not  think  of  God ;  I  hoped  there  was  no 
need  to  trouble  himself  with  any  such  thoughts  yet." 

Humour  can  go  no  farther  than  that  terrible,  illum- 
inating phrase,  which  is  laughable  enough,  heaven 
knows,  but  scarce  likely  to  make  you  laugh.  Contrast 
the  humour  of  that  v/ith  the  humour  of  such  a  story  as 
Lever  delighted  in.  There  were  two  priests  dining 
with  a  regiment,  we  all  have  read  in  Harry  Lorrequer, 
who  chaffed  a  dour  Ulster  Protestant  till  he  was  the 
open  derision  of  the  mess.  Next  tim.e  they  returned, 
the  Protestant  major  was  radiant  with  a  geniality  that 
they  could  not  explain  till  they  had  to  make  their  way 
out  of  barracks  in  a  hurry,  and  found  that  the  counter- 
sign (arranged  by  the  major)  was  *'  Bloody  end  to  the 
Pope."  Told  as  Lever  tells  it,  with  all  manner  of 
jovial  amplifications,  that  story  would  make  anyone 
laugh.  But  it  does  not  go  deep.  The  thing  is  funny 
in  too  obvious  a  way;  the  mirth  finds  too  large  an 


A  CENTURY  OF   IRISH   HUMOUR       27 

outlet  in  laughter;  it  does  not  hang  about  the  brain, 
inextricable  from  the  processes  of  thought;  it  carries 
nothing  with  it  beyond  the  jest.  And  just  as  tears 
help  to  an  assuaging  of  grief,  so  in  a  sense  laughter 
makes  an  end  of  mirth.  Give  a  feeling  its  instinctive 
vent,  and  you  will  soon  be  done  with  it,  like  the  child 
who  laughs  and  cries  within  five  minutes;  check  it, 
and  it  spreads  inward,  gaining  in  intellectual  quality 
as  it  loses  in  physical  expression.  The  moral  is,  that 
if  you  v/ish  to  be  really  humorous  you  must  not  be  too 
funny;  and  the  capital  defect  of  most  Irish  humour  is 
that  its  aim  is  too  simple — it  does  not  look  beyond 
raising  a  laugh. 

There  are  brilliant  exceptions  in  the  century  that 
lies  between  Sheridan  and  Mr.  Bernard  Shaw,  between 
Maria  Edgev^'orth  and  Miss  Barlow.  But  serious  art 
or  serious  thought  in  Ireland  has  always  revealed  itself 
to  the  English  sooner  or  later  as  a  species  of  sedition, 
and  the  Irish  have  v/ith  culpable  folly  allowed  them- 
selves to  accept  for  characteristic  excellences  what 
were  really  the  damning  defects  of  their  work — an  easy 
fluency  of  wit,  a  careless  spontaneity  of  laughter.  They 
have  taken  Moore  for  a  great  poet,  and  Handy  Andy 
for  a  humorist  to  be  proud  of.  Yet  an  Irishman  who 
wishes  to  speak  dispassionate!}^  must  find  humour  of  a 
very  different  kind  from  that  of  Handy  Andy  or  Harry 
Lorrequer  eitner,  to  commend  without  reserve,  as  a 
thing  that  may  be  put  forward  to  rank  wiLh  what  is 
best  in  other  literatures. 

Taking  Sheridan  and  Miss  Edgeworth  as  marking 
the  point  of  departure,  it  becomes  obvious  that  one  is 
at  an  end,  the  other  at  a  beginning.  Sheridan  belongs 
body  and  soul  to  the  eighteenth  century;  Miss  Edge- 


28       IRISH  BOOKS  AND  IRISH  PEOPLE 

worth,  though  her  name  sounds  oddly  in  that  context, 
is  part  and  parcel  of  the  romantic  movement.  The 
*'  postscript  which  ought  to  have  been  a  preface  **  to 
Waverley  declared,  though  after  Scott's  magnificent 
fashion,  a  real  indebtedness.  Sheridan's  humour, 
essentially  metropolitan,  had  found  no  use  for  local 
colour ;  Miss  Edgeworth  before  Scott  proved  the  artistic 
value  that  could  be  extracted  from  the  characteristics 
of  a  special  breed  of  people  under  special  circum- 
stances in  a  special  place.  Mr.  Yeats,  who,  like  all 
poets,  is  a  most  suggestive  and  a  most  misleading 
critic,  has  declared  that  modem  Irish  literature  begins 
with  Carleton.  That  is  only  true  if  we  are  determined 
to  look  in  Irish  literature  for  qualities  that  can  be  called 
Celtic — if  we  insist  that  the  outlook  on  the  world  shall 
be  the  Catholic's  or  the  peasant's.  Miss  Edgeworth 
had  not  a  trace  of  the  Celt — as  I  conceive  that  rather 
indefinite  entity — about  her;  but  she  was  as  good  an 
Irishwoman  as  ever  walked,  and  there  are  hundreds 
of  Irish  people  of  her  class  and  creed  looking  at  Irish 
life  with  kindly  humorous  Irish  eyes,  seeing  pretty 
much  what  she  saw,  enjoying  it  as  she  enjoyed  it,  but 
with  neither  her  power  nor  her  will  to  set  it  down. 
Castle  Rackrent  is  a  masterpiece ;  and  had  Miss  Edge- 
worth  been  constant  to  the  dramatic  method  which  she 
then  struck  out  for  herself,  with  all  the  fine  reticences 
that  it  involved,  her  name  might  have  stood  high  in 
literature.  Unhappily,  her  too  exemplary  father 
repressed  the  artist  in  her,  fostered  the  pedagogue,  and 
in  her  later  books  she  commits  herself  to  an  attitude  in 
which  slie  can  moralise  explicitly  upon  the  ethical  and 
social  bearings  of  every  word  and  action.  The  fine 
humour  in  Ormond  is  obscured  by  its  setting ;  in  Castle 


A  CENTURY  OF   IRISH   HUMOUR       29 

Rackrent  the  humour  shines.  Sir  Condy  and  his  lady 
we  see  none  the  less  distinctly  for  seeing  them  through 
the  eyes  of  old  Thady,  the  retainer  who  narrates  the 
Rackrent  history ;  and  in  the  process  we  have  a  vision 
of  old  Thady  himself.  Now  and  then  the  novelist 
reminds  us  of  her  presence  by  some  extravagantly 
ironic  touch,  as  when  Thady  describes  Sir  Condy *s 
anger  with  the  Government  **  about  a  place  that  was 
promised  him  and  never  given,  after  his  supporting 
them  against  his  conscience  very  honourably  and 
being  greatly  abused  for,  he  having  the  name  of  a 
great  patriot  in  the  country.'*  Thady  would  hardly 
have  been  so  ingenuous  as  that.  But  for  the  most 
part  the  humour  is  truly  inherent  in  the  situation,  and 
you  might  look  far  for  a  better  passage  than  the 
description  of  Sir  Condy 's  parting  with  his  lady.  But 
it  is  better  to  illustrate  from  a  scene  perhaps  less 
genuinely  humorous,  but  more  professedly  so — Sir 
Condy 's  wake.  Miss  Edgeworth  does  not  dwell  on 
the  broad  farce  of  the  entertainment;  she  does  not 
make  Thady  eloquent  over  the  whisky  that  was  drunk 
and  the  fighting  that  began  and  so  forth,  as  Lever  or 
Carleton  would  certainly  have  been  inclined  to  do. 
She  fixes  on  the  central  comedy  of  the  situation.  Sir 
Condy's  innocent  vanity  and  its  pitiable  disappoint- 
ment— is  it  necessary  to  recall  that  he  had  arranged 
for  the  wake  himself,  because  he  always  wanted  to 
see  his  own  funeral?  Poor  Sir  Condy  ! — even  Thady, 
who  was  in  the  secret,  had  forgotten  all  about  him, 
when  he  was  startled  by  the  sound  of  his  master's 
voice  from  under  the  greatcoats  thrown  all  atop. 

"'Thady,'    says   he,    'I've   had   enough  of   this;    I'm   smothering 
and  can't  hear  a  word  of  all  they're  saying  of  the  deceased.'     '  God 


30       IRISH  BOOKS  AND  IRISH  PEOPLE 

bless  you,  and  lie  still  and  quiet  a  bit  longer,'  says  I,  '  for  my 
sister's  afraid  of  ghosts,  and  would  die  on  the  spot  with  fright  if 
she  was  to  see  you  come  to  life  all  on  a  sudden  this  way  without 
the  least  preparation.'  So  he  lays  him  still,  though  well-nigh 
stifled,  and  I  made  haste  to  tell  the  secret  of  the  joke,  whispering 
to  one  and  t'other,  and  there  was  a  great  surprise,  but  not  so 
great  as  he  had  laid  out  there  would.  '  And  aren't  we  to  have  the 
pipes  and  tobacco  after  coming  so  far  to-night?'  said  some  one; 
but  they  were  all  well  enough  pleased  when  his  honour  got  up  to 
drink  with  them,  and  sent  for  more  spirits  from  a  shebeen  house 
where  they  very  civilly  let  him  have  it  upon  credit.  So  the  night 
passed  off  very  merrily ;  but  to  my  mind  Sir  Condy  was  rather 
upon  the  sad  order  in  the  midst  of  it  all,  not  finding  there  had 
been  such  great  talk  about  himself  after  his  death  as  that  he  had 
always  expected  ,to  hear." 

In  the  end  Sir  Condy  died,  not  by  special  arrange- 
ment. **  He  had  but  a  poor  funeral  after  all,"  is 
Thady's  remark;  and  you  see  with  the  kindly  double 
vision  of  the  humorist  Thady's  sincere  regret  for  the 
circumstance  that  would  most  have  afflicted  the 
deceased,  as  well  as  the  more  obviously  comic  side  of 
Thady's  comment  and  Sir  Condy's  lifelong  aspiration. 
Indeed,  the  whole  narrative  is  shot  with  many  mean- 
ings, and  one  never  turns  to  it  without  a  renewed 
faculty  of  laughter. 

If  it  were  necessary  to  compare  true  humour  with 
the  make-believe,  a  comparison  might  be  drawn 
between  Thady  and  the  servant  in  Lady  Morgan's 
novel  O'Donnell.  Rory  is  the  stage  Irishman  in  all 
his  commonest  attitudes.  But  it  is  better  to  go 
straight  on,  and  concern  ourselves  solely  with  the 
work  of  real  literary  quality,  and  Carleton  falls  next 
to  be  considered. 

Of  genius  with  inadequate  equipment  it  is  always 
difficult  to  speak.  Carleton  is  the  nearest  thing  to 
Burns  that  vve  have  to  show;  and  his  faults,   almost 


A  CENTURY  OF   IRISH   HUMOUR       31 

insuperable  to  the  ordinary  reader,  are  the  faults 
which  Burns  seldom  failed  to  display  when  writing  in 
English.  But  to  Burns  there  was  given  an  instrument 
perfected  by  long  centuries  of  use — the  Scotch  ver- 
nacular song  and  ballad ;  Carleton  had  to  make  his 
own,  and  the  genius  for  form  v/as  lacking  in  him. 
Some  day  there  may  come  a  man  of  pure  Irish  race 
who  will  be  to  Carleton  what^  Burns  was  to  Ferguson, 
and  then  Ireland  will  have  what  it  lacks ;  moreover,  in 
the  light  of  his  achievement  we  shall  see  better  what 
the  pioneer  accomplished.  Every  gift  that  Carleton 
had — and  pathos  and  humour,  things  complementary 
to  each  other,  he  possessed  in  profusion — every  gift 
is  obscured  by  faulty  technique.  Nearly  every  trait  is 
overcharged;  for  instance,  in  his  story  of  the  MidnrgJ^* 
Mass  he  rings  the  changes  interminably  upon  the  old 
business  of  the  v/onderful  medicine  in  the  vagrants' 
blessed  horn  that  had  a  strong  odour  of  whisky;  but 
what  an  admirably  humorous  figure  is  this  same 
Darby  O'More  !  Out  of  the  Poor  Scholar  alone,  that 
inchoate  masterpiece,  you  could  illustrate  a  dozen 
phases  of  Carleton 's  mirth,  beginning  with  the  famous 
serm^on  where  the  priest  so  artfully  wheedles  and 
coaxes  his  congregation  into  generosity  towards  the 
boy  who  is  going  out  on  the  w^orld,  and  all  the  while 
unconsciously  displays  his  own  laughable  and  lovable 
weaknesses.  There  you  have  the  double  vision,  that 
helps  to  laugh  with  the  priest,  and  to  laugh  at  him  in 
the  same  breath,  as  unmistakably  as  in  the  strange 
scene  of  the  famine  days  where  the  party  of  mvowers 
find  Jimmy  sick  of  the  fever  by  the  wayside  and 
**schame  a  day'*  from  their  employer  to  build  him  a 
rough  shelter.       That  whole   chapter,   describing  the 


32       IRISH  BOOKS  AND  IRISH  PEOPLE 

indefatigable  industry  with  which  they  labour  on  the 
voluntary  task,  their  glee  in  the  truantry  from  the 
labour  for  which  they  are  paid,  their  casuistry  over 
the  theft  of  milk  for  the  pious  puprpose  of  keeping  the 
poor  lad  alive,  the  odd  blending  of  cowardice  and 
magnanimity  in  their  terror  of  the  sickness  and  in 
their  constant  care  that  some  one  should  at  least  be 
always  in  earshot  of  the  boy,  ready  to  pass  in  to  him 
on  a  long-handed  shovel  what  food  they  could  scrape 
up,  their  supple  ingenuity  in  deceiving  the  pompous 
landlord  who  comes  to  oversee  their  work, — all  that 
is  the  completest  study  in  existence  of  Irish  character 
as  it  came  to  be  under  the  system  of  absolute  depen- 
dence. There  is  nothing  so  just  as  true  humour,  for 
by  the  law  of  its  being  it  sees  inevitably  two  sides; 
and  this  strange  comxpound  of  vices  and  virtues,  so 
rich  in  ail  the  sorter  qualities,  so  lacking  in  all  the 
harder  ones,  stands  there  in  Carleton's  pages,  neither 
condemned  nor  justified,  but  seen  and  understood 
with  a  kindly  insight.  Carleton  is  the  document  of 
documents  for  Ireland  in  the  years  before  the  famine, 
preserving  a  record  of  conditions  material  and  spiri- 
tual, which  happily  have  largely  ceased  to  exist,  yet 
operate  indefinite!}^  as  causes  among  us,  producing 
eternal  though  eternally  modifiable  effects. 

But,  for  the  things  in  human  nature  that  are  neither 
of  yesterday,  to-da3^  nor  to-morrow,  but  unchange- 
able, he  has  the  humorist's  true  touch.  When  the 
poor  scholar  is  departing,  and  has  actually  torn  him- 
self away  from  home,  his  niother  runs  after  him  with 
a  last  token — a  small  bottle  of  holy  water.  *'  Jimmy, 
alanna,"  said  she,  **  here's  this  an'  carry  it  about  you 
— it  will  keep  evil  from  you ;  an'  be  sure  to  take  good 


A  CENTURY  OF   IRISH   HUMOUR       33 

care  of  the  written  characther  you  got  from  the  priest 
an*  Squire  Benson;  an',  darlin',  don't  be  lookin'  too 
often  at  the  cuff  o'  your  coat,  for  feard  the  people 
might  get  a  notion  that  you  have  the  banknotes  sewed 
in  it.  An',  Jimmy  agra,  don't  be  too  lavish  upon 
their  Munsther  crame ;  they  say  'tis  apt  to  give  people 
the  ague.  Kiss  me  agin,  agra,  an'  the  heavens  above 
keep  you  safe  and  well  till  we  see  you  once  more." 

Through  all  that  catalogue  of  precautions,  divine 
and  human,  one  feels  the  mood  between  tears  and 
laughter  of  the  man  who  set  it  down.  But  I  think  you 
only  come  to  the  truth  about  Carleton  in  the  last  scene 
of  all,  when  Jimmy  returns  to  his  home,  a  priest. 
Nothing  could  be  more  stilted,  more  laboured,  than 
the  pages  which  attempt  to  render  his  emotions  and 
his  words,  till  there  comes  the  revealing  touch.  His 
mother  at  sight  of  him,  returned  unlooked-for  after  the 
long  absence,  loses  for  a  moment  the  possession  of  her 
faculties,  and  cannot  be  restored.  At  last,  **  I  will 
speak  to  her,"  said  Jimmy,  **  in  Irish;  it  will  go 
directly  to  her  heart."     And  it  does. 

Carleton  never  could  speak  to  us  in  Irish ;  the  Eng- 
lish was  still  a  strange  tongue  on  his  lips  and  in  the 
ears  of  those  he  lived  among;  and  his  v/ork  comes 
down  distracted  between  the  two  languages,  imper- 
fect and  halting,  only  with  flashes  of  true  and  living 
speech. 

When  you  come  to  Lever,  it  is  a  very  different 
story.  Lever  was  at  no  lack  for  utterance ;  nobody 
was  ever  more  voluble,  no  one  ever  less  inclined  to 
sit  and  bite  his  pen,  waiting  for  the  one  and  only  word. 
Good  or  bad,  he  could  be  trusted  to  rattle  on;  and,  as 
Trollope   said,    if   you   pulled   him    out   of   bed    and 


34       IRISH  BOOKS  AND  IRISH  PEOPLE 

demanded  something  witty,  lie  would  Rash  it  at  you 
before  he  was  half  awake.  Some  people  are  born 
with  the  perilous  gift  of  improvisation;  and  the  best 
that  can  be  said  for  Lever  is  that  he  is  the  nearest  equi- 
valent in  Irish  literature,  or  in  English  either,  to  the 
marvellous  faculty  of  D'Artagnan's  creator.  He  has 
the  same  exuberance,  the  same  inexhaustible  supply 
of  animal  spirits,  of  invention  that  is  always  spirited, 
of  wit  that  goes  off  like  fireworks.  He  delighted  a 
whole  generation  of  readers,  and  one  reader  at  least 
in  this  generation  he  still  delights;  but  I  own  that  to 
enjoy  him  you  must  have  mastered  the  art  of  skip- 
ping. Whether  you  take  him  in  his  earlier  manner, 
in  the  *'  Charles  O'Malley  '*  vein  of  adventure,  fox- 
hunting, steeple-chasing.  Peninsular  fighting,  or  in 
his  later  more  intellectual  studies  of  shady  financiers, 
needy  political  adventurers,  and  the  whole  generation 
of  usurers  and  blacklegs,  he  is  always  good;  but  alas 
and  alas,  he  is  never  good  enough.  His  work  is 
rotten  with  the  disease  of  anecdote;  instead  of  that 
laborious  concentration  on  a  single  character  which 
is  necessary  for  any  kind  of  creative  work,  but  above 
all  for  humorous  creation,  he  presents  you  with  a 
sketch,  a  passing  glimpse,  and  when  you  look  to  see 
the  suggestion  followed  out  he  is  off  at  score  with  a 
story.  In  the  first  chapter  of  Davenport  Dunn,  for 
instance,  there  is  an  Irish  gentleman  on  the  Conti- 
nent, a  pork-butcher  making  his  first  experience  of 
Italy,  hit  o^  to  the  life.  But  a  silhouette — and  a  very 
funny  silhouette — is  all  that  we  get  of  Mr.  O'Reilly, 
and  the  figures  over  whom  Lever  had  taken  trouble — 
for  in  that  work  Lever  did  take  trouble — are  not  seen 
with    humour.       Directly    he    began    to     think,     his 


A  CENTURY  OF   IRISH    HUMOUR       35 

humour  left  him;  it  is  as  if  he  had  been  funny  in 
watertight  compartments.  And  perhaps  that  is  why, 
here  as  elsewhere,  he  shrank  from  the  necessary  con- 
centration of  thought. 

There  is  always  a  temptation  to  hold  a  brief  for 
Lever,  because  he  has  been  most  unjustly  censured  by 
Irishmen,  even  in  so  august  and  impartial  a  court  as 
the  Dictionary  of  National  Biography,  as  if  he  had 
traduced  his  countrymen.  Did  Thackeray,  then, 
malign  the  English?  The  only  charge  that  may 
fairly  be  brought  against  him  is  the  one  that  cannot 
be  rebutted — the  charge  of  superficiality  and  of 
scamped  work,  of  a  humour  that  only  plays  over  the 
surface  of  things — a.  humour  which  sees  only  the 
comic  side  that  anybody  might  see.  And  because  I 
cannot  defend  him,  I  say  no  more.  Lever  is  certainly 
not  a  great  humorist,  but  he  is  delightful  company. 

One  may  mention  in  passing  the  excursions  into 
broad  comedy  of  another  brilliant  Irishman — Le 
Fanu's  short  stories  in  the  Purcell  Papers,  such  as  the 
Quare  Gander,  or  Billy  Molovoney  s  Taste  oj 
Love  and  Glory.  These  are  good  examples  of  a 
particular  literary  type — the  humorous  anecdote — 
in  which  Irish  humour  has  always  been  fertile,  and  of 
which  the  ne  plus  ultra  is  Sir  Samuel  Ferguson's  mag- 
nificent squib  in  Blackwood,  Father  Tom  and  the 
Pope.  Everybody  knows  the  merits  of  that  story,  its 
inexhaustible  fertility  of  comparison,  its  dialectic 
ingenuity,  its  jovialty,  its  drollery,  its  Rabelaisian 
laughter.  But,  after  all,  the  highest  type  of  humour 
is  hum.our  applying  itself  to  the  facts  of  life,  and  this 
is  burlesque  humour  squandering  itself  in  riot  upon 
a  delectable  fiction.       Humour  is  a  great  deal  more 


36       IRISH  BOOKS  AND  IRISH  PEOPLE 

than  a  plaything;  it  is  a  force,  a  weapon — at  once 
sword  and  shield.  If  there  is  to  be  an  art  of  literature 
in  Ireland  that  can  be  called  national,  it  cannot  afford 
to  devote  humour  solely  to  the  production  of  trifles. 
Father  Tom  is  a  trifle,  a  splendid  toy;  and  what  is 
more,  a  trifle  wrought  in  a  moment  of  ease  by  perhaps 
the  most  serious  and  conscientious  artist  that  ever 
made  a  contribution  to  the  small  body  of  real  Irish 
literature  in  the  tongue  that  is  now  native  to  the  majo- 
rity of  Irishmen. 

Of  contemporaries,  with  one  exception,  I  do  not 
propose  to  speak  at  any  length,  nor  can  I  hope  that 
my  review  will  be  complete.  There  is  first  and  fore- 
most Miss  Barlow,  a  lady  whose  work  is  so  gentle,  so 
unassuming,  that  one  hears  little  of  it  in  the  rush  and 
flare  of  these  strident  times,  but  who  will  be  heard 
and  listened  to  with  fresh  emotion  as  the  stream  is 
heard  when  the  scream  and  rattle  of  a  railway  train 
have  passed  away  into  silence.  Is  she  a  humorist? 
Not  in  the  sense  of  provoking  laughter — and  yet  the 
things  that  she  sees  and  loves  and  dwells  on  would 
be  unbearable  if  they  were  not  seen  through  a  delicate 
mist  of  mirth.  The  daily  life  of  people  at  continual 
handgrips  with  starvation,  their  little  points  of  honour, 
their  little  questions  of  precedence,  the  infinite  gene- 
rosity that  concerns  itself  with  the  expenditure  of  six- 
pence, the  odd  shifts  they  resort  to  that  a  gift  may  not 
have  the  appearance  of  charity, — all  these  are  set 
down  with  a  tenderness  of  laughter  that  is  peculiarly 
and  distinctively  Irish. 

Yet,  though  we  may  find  a  finer  quality  of  humour 
in  those  writers  who  do  not  seek  to  raise  a  laugh — for 
instance,  the  subtle  pervasive  humour  in  Mr.  Yeats 's 


A   CENTURY  OF   IRISH   HUMOUR       37 

Celtic  Twilight — still  there  are  few  greater  attractions 
than  that  of  open  healthy  laughter  of  the  contagious 
sort;  and  it  would  be  black  ingratitude  not  to  pay  tri- 
bute to  the  authoresses  of  Some  Experiences  oj  an 
Irish  R.M. — a  book  that  no  decorous  person  can  read 
with  comfort  in  a  railway  carriage.  These  ladies 
have  the  keenest  eye  for  the  obvious  humours  of  Irish 
life,  they  have  abundance  of  animal  spirits,  and  they 
have  that  knack  at  fluent  description  embroidered  with 
a  wealth  of  picturesque  details  that  is  shared  by  hun- 
dreds of  peasants  in  Ireland,  but  is  very  rare  indeed 
on  the  printed  page.  And,  mingling  with  the  broad 
farce  there  is  a  deal  of  excellent  comedy — for  instance, 
in  the  person  of  old  Mrs.  Knox  of  Aussolas.  But 
there  is  the  same  point  to  insist  on — and  since  these 
witty  and  delightful  ladies  have  already  the  applause 
of  all  the  world  one  insists  less  unwillingly — this  kind 
of  thing,  admirable  as  it  is,  will  not  redeem  Irish 
humour  from  the  reproach  of  trifling.  But  in  the 
novel.  The  Real  Charlotte,  there  is  humour  as  grim 
almost  as  Swift's — and  as  completely  un-English ;  it  is 
a  humour  which  assuredly  stirs  more  faculties  than 
the  simple  one  of  laughter. 

There  is  indeed  a  literature  which,  if  not  always 
exactly  humorous,  is  closely  allied  to  it — the  literature 
of  satire  and  invective ;  and  in  this  Ireland  has  always 
been  prolific.  In  the  days  of  the  old  kings  the  order  of 
bards  had  grown  so  numerous,  that  they  comprised  a 
third  of  the  whole  population,  and  they  devoted  them- 
selves with  such  talent  and  zeal  to  the  task  of  invec- 
tive that  no  man  could  live  in  peace,  and  the  country 
cried  out  against  them,  and  there  was  talk  of  suppress- 
ing the  whole  order.     The  king  spared  them  on  con- 


38       IRISH  BOOKS  AND  IRISH  PEOPLE 

dition  that  they  would  mend  their  manners.  We 
have  those  bards  still,  but  nowadays  we  call  them 
politicians  and  journalists ;  and  frankly  I  think  we  are 
ripe  for  another  intervention,  if  only  in  the  interests  of 
literature.  So  much  good  talent  goes  to  waste  in  bad 
words;  and,  moreover,  an  observance  of  the  decencies 
is  always  salutary  for  style.  And  it  seems  that  as  the 
years  have  gone  on,  humour  has  diminished  in  Irish 
politics,  while  bad  humour  has  increased;  and  there- 
fore I  leave  alone  any  attempt  to  survey  the  humour 
of  the  orators,  though  Curran  tempts  one  at  the  begin- 
ning and  Mr.  Healy  at  the  close.  Of  purely  literary 
satire  there  has  been  little  enough,  apart  from  its 
emergence  in  the  novel;  but  thore  is  one  example 
which  deserves  to  be  recalled.  I  have  never  professed 
enthusiasm  for  Thomas  Moore,  but  I  am  far  indeed 
from  agreeing  with  a  recent  critic  who  would  claim 
literary  rank  for  him  rather  in  virtue  of  the  Fudge 
Family  than  of  the  Irish  Melodies.  That  satire  does 
not  seem  to  get  beyond  brilliancy;  it  is  very  clever, 
and  not  much  more.  Still,  there  are  passages  in  it 
which  cannot  be  read  without  enjoyment;  and  one 
quotation  may  be  permitted,  since  it  puts  with  perfect 
distinctness  what  it  is  always  permissible  to  put — the 
English  case  against  Ireland. 

I'm  a  plain  man   who  speak  the  truth, 

And  trust  you'll  think  me  not  uncivil 
When  I  declare  that  from  my  youth 

I've  wished  your  country  at  the  devil. 
Nor  can   I  doubt  indeed  from  all 

I've  heard  of  your   high   patriot   fame, 
From  every  word  your  lips  let  fall, 

That  you  most  truly  wish  the  same. 


A  CENTURY  OF   IRISH   HUMOUR       39 

It   plagues  one's   life   out ;    thirty  years 

Have  I  had  dinning  in  my  ears — 
Ireland   wants  this  and  that  and   t'other  ; 

And   to  this   hour  one   nothing  hears 
But  the  same   vile  eternal  bother. 

While  of  those  countless  things  she  wanted, 
Thank  God,  but  little  has  been  granted. 

The  list  of  writers  of  humorous  verse  in  Ireland  is  a 
long  one,  but  a  catalogue  of  ephemera.  Even  Father 
Prout  at  this  time  of  day  is  little  more  than  a  dried 
specimen  labelled  for  reference,  or  at  most  preserved 
in  vitality  by  the  immortal  Groves  oj  Blarney.  But 
neither  that  work,  nor  even  The  Night  bejore  Larry 
was  stretched,  nor  Le  Fanu's  ballad  of  Shemus 
O'Brien,  can  rank  altogether  as  literature.  About  the 
humorous  song  I  need  only  say  that,  so  far  as  my 
experience  goes,  there  is  one,  and  one  only,  which  a 
person  with  no  taste  for  music  and  some  taste  for 
literature  can  hear  frequently  with  pleasure,  and  that 
3ong  of  course  is  Father  O'Flynn.  To  recall  the 
delightful  lingenuity  and  the  nimble  wit  shown  by 
another  Irishman  of  the  same  family  in  the  Hawarden 
Horace,  and  in  a  lesser  degree  by  Mr.  Godley  in  his 
Musa  Frivola,  leads  naturally  to  the  inquiry  why 
humour  from  Aristophanes  to  Carlyle  has  always  pre- 
fe^rred  the  side  of  reaction — a  question  that  would 
need  an  essay,  or  a  volume,  all  to  itself. 

But  the  central  question  is  after  all  why  in  a  race 
where  humour  is  so  preponderant  in  the  racial  tem- 
perament does  so  little  of  the  element  crystallise  itself 
in  literature.  Humour  ranks  with  the  water  power  as 
one  of  the  great  undeveloped  resources  of  the  country. 
Something  indeed  has  been  done  in  the  past  with  the 
river  of  laughter  that  almost   every  Irish  person  has 


40       IRISH  BOOKS  AND  IRISH  PEOPLE 

flowing  in  his  heart ;  but  infinitely  more  might  be  done 
if  these  rivers  were  put  in  harness. 

Yet,  take  away  two  Irish  names  from  the  field  of 
modern  comedy  in  the  English  language  written  dur- 
ing the  nineteenth  century,  and  you  have  uncommonly 
little  for  which  literary  merit  can  be  claimed.  The 
quality  of  Oscar  Wilde's  is  scarcely  disputed.  There 
is  the  more  reason  to  dwell  on  Mr.  Bernard  Shaw*s 
plays,  because  they  have  not  even  in  the  twentieth 
century  been  fully  accepted  by  that  queer  folk,  the 
theatre-going  public.  But  I  never  yet  heard  of  any- 
one who  saw  You  Never  can  Tell,  and  v/as  not  amused 
by  it.  That  was  a  farce,  no  doubt,  but  a  farce  which 
appealed  to  emotions  less  elementary  than  those  which 
are  touched  by  the  spectacle  of  a  man  sitting  down  by 
accident  on  his  hat;  it  was  a  farce  of  intellectual 
absurdities,  of  grotesque  situations  arising  out  of  per- 
versities of  character  and  opinion;  a  farce  that  you 
could  laugh  at  without  a  loss  of  self-respect.  But  it  is 
rather  by  his  comedies  than  by  his  farces  that  Mr. 
Shaw  should  be  judged.  If  they  are  not  popular,  it  is 
for  a  very  good  reason  :  Mr.  Shaw's  humour  is  too 
serious.  His  humour  is  a  strong  solvent,  and  one  of 
the  many  things  about  which  this  humorist  is  in  deadly 
earnest  is  the  fetish  worship  of  tradition.  To  that  he 
persists  in  applying — in  Candida  as  in  half  a  dozen 
other  plays — the  ordeal  by  laughter — an  ordeal  which 
every  human  institution  is  bound  to  face.  Candida 
will  not  only  make  people  laugh,  it  will  make  them 
think;  and  it  is  not  easy  to  induce  the  public  to  think 
after  dinner  on  unaccustomed  lines.  They  will  laugh 
when  they  have  been  used  to  laugh,  weep  when  they 
have  been  used  to  weep ;  but  if  you  ask  them  to  laugh 


A   CENTURY  OF    IRISH    HU?v10UR       41 

when  they  expect  to  weep,  or  vice  versa,  the  public 
will  resent  the  proceeding.  The  original  humorist, 
like  every  other  original  artist,  has  got  slowly  and 
laboriously  to  convert  his  public  before  he  can  con- 
vince ihem  of  his  right  to  find  tears  and  laughter 
where  he  can. 

Whatever  Mr.  Shaw  touches,  whether  it  be  the  half- 
hysterical  impulse  that  sometimes  passes  current  for 
heroism,  as  in  Arms  and  the  Man,  or,  as  in  the  Devil's 
Disciple,  the  conventional  picturesqueness  of  a  Don 
Juan — that  maker  of  laws,  breaker  of  hearts,  so  fami- 
liar with  the  limelight,  so  unused  to  the  illumination 
by  laughter,  who  finds  himself  in  the  long  run  deplor- 
ably stigmatised  as  a  saint — there  is  a  flood  of  light 
let  in  upon  all  manner  of  traditional  poses,  literary 
insincerities  that  have  crept  into  life.  There  are  few 
things  of  more  value  in  a  commonwealth  than  such  a 
searching  faculty  of  laughter.  Like  Sheridan,  Mr. 
Shaw  lives  in  England,  and  uses  his  comic  gift  for  the 
most  part  on  subjects  suggested  to  him  by  English 
conditions  of  life,  but  with  a  strength  of  intellectual 
purpose  that  Sheridan  never  possessed.  Irishmen 
may  wish  that  he  found  his  material  in  Ireland.  But 
an  artist  must  take  what  his  hand  finds,  and  there  is 
no  work  in  the  world  more  full  of  the  Scottish  spirit  or 
the  Scottish  humour  than  Carlyle's  French  Revolution. 
If  it  be  asked  whether  Mr.  Shaw's  humour  is  typically 
Irish,  I  must  reply  by  another  question  :  **  Could  his 
plays  have  conceivably  been  written  by  any  but  an 
Irishman}" 

Is  there,  in  fact,  a  distinctively  Irish  humour?  In  a 
sense,  yes,  no  doubt,  just  as  the  English  humour  is  of 
a  different  quality  from  the  Greek  or  the  French.    But 

P 


42        IRISH  BOOKS  AND  IRISH  PEOI^LE 

nobody  wants  to  pin  dov/n  English  humour  to  the  for- 
mula of  a  definition;  no  one  wants  to  say,  Thus  far 
shalt  thou  go,  and  beyond  that  shalt  cease  to  be  Eng- 
lish. Moreover,  a  leading  characteristic  of  the  Irish 
type  is  just  its  variety — its  continual  deviation  from 
the  normal.  How,  then,  to  find  a  description  that 
will  apply  to  a  certain  quality  of  mind  throughout  a 
variable  race;  that  quality  being  in  its  essence  the 
most  complete  expression  of  an  individuality,  in  its 
difference  from  other  individualities,  since  a  man's 
humour  is  the  most  individual  thing  about  him? 
Description  is  perhaps  more  possible  than  definition. 
One  may  say  that  the  Irish  hum.our  is  kindly  and 
lavish ;  that  it  tends  to  express  itself  in  an  exuberance 
of  phrase,  a  wild  riot  of  comparisons;  that  it  amplifies 
rather  than  retrenches,  finding  its  effects  by  an  accu- 
mulation of  traits,  and  not  by  a  concentration.  The 
vernacular  Irish  literature  is  there  to  prove  that  Irish 
fancy  gives  too  much  rather  than  too  little  One  may 
observe,  again,  that  a  nation  laughs  habitually  over 
its  besetting  v/eakness;  and  if  the  French  find  their 
mirth  by  preference  in  dubious  adventures,  it  cannot 
be  denied  that  much  Irish  humour  has  a  pronounced 
alcoholic  flavour.  But  it  is  belter  neither  to  define  nor 
to  describe;  there  is  more  harmful  misunderstanding 
caused  by  setting  down  this  or  that  quality,  this  or 
that  person,  as  typically  French,  typically  English, 
typically  Irish,  than  by  any  other  fallacy;  and  we  Irish 
have  suffered  peculiarly  by  the  notion  that  the  typical 
Irishman  is  the  funny  man  of  the  empire.  What  1 
would  permit  myself  to  assert  is,  first,  that  the  truest 
humour  is  not  just  the  light  mirth  that  comes  easily 
from  the  lips-— that,  in  the  hackneyed  phrase,  bubbles 


A   CENTURY  OF   IRISH    HUMOUR       43 

over  spontaneously — but  is  the  expression  of  deep 
feeling  and  deep  thought,  made  possible  by  deep 
study  of  the  means  to  expn-ess  it;  and  secondly,  that 
literature,  which  through  the  earlier  part  of  last  cen- 
tury never  received  in  Ireland  the  laborious  brooding 
care  without  which  no  considerable  work  of  art  is 
possible,  now  receives  increasingly  the  artist's  labour; 
and  consequently  that  among  our  later  humorists  we 
find  a  faculty  of  mirth  that  lies  deeper,  reaches  farther, 
judges  more  subtly,  calls  into  light  a  v/ider  complex  of 
relations.  After  all,  laughter  is  the  most  distinctive 
faculty  of  man ;  and  I  submit  that,  so  far  as  literature 
shows,  we  Irish  can  better  afford  to  be  judged  by  our 
laughter  no^v  than  a  century  ago. 

1901. 


LITERATURE  AMONG  THE  ILLITERATES 

I 

THE  SHANACHY 

^HERE  is  nothing  belter  known  about  Ire- 
land than  this  fact :  that  ilhteracy  is 
more  frequent  among  the  Irish  Catholic 
peasantry  than  in  any  other  class  of  the 
British  population;  and  that  especially 
upon  the  Irish-speaking  peasant  does  the  stigma  lie. 
Yet  it  is,  perhaps,  as  well  to  inquire  a  little  more  pre- 
cisely "v/hat  is  meant  by  an  illiterate.  If  to  be  literate 
is  to  possess  a  knowledge  of  the  language,  literature, 
and  historical  traditions  of  a  man's  own  country — and 
this  is  no  very  unreasonable  application  of  the  word — 
then  this  Irish-speaking  peasantry  has  a  better  claim 
to  the  title  than  can  be  shown  by  most  bodies  of  men. 
I  have  heard  the  existence  of  an  Irish  literature  denied 
by  a  roomful  of  prosperous  educated  gentlemen;  and, 
within  a  week,  I  have  heard,  in  the  same  county,  the 
classics  of  that  literature  recited  by  an  Irish  peasant 
who  could  neither  write  nor  read.  On  which  part 
should  the  stigma  of  illiteracy  set  the  uglier  brand? 

The  Gaelic  revival  sends  many  of  us  to  school  in 
Irish-speaking  districts,  and,  if  it  did  nothing  else,  at 
least  it  would  have  sent  us  to  school  in  pleasant  places 
among  the  most  lovable  preceptors.  It  was  a  blessed 
change  from  London  to  a  valley  among  hills  that  look 


THE  SHANACHY  45 

over  the  Atlantic,  with  its  brown  stream  tearing  down 
among  boulders,  and  its  heathy  banks,  where  the  keen 
fragrance  of  bog-myrtle  rose  as  you  brushed  through 
in  the  morning  on  your  way  to  the  head  of  a  pool. 
Here  was  indeed  a  desirable  academy,  and  my  pre- 
ceptor matched  it.  A  big,  loose-jointed  old  man, 
rough,  brownish-gray  all  over,  clothes,  hair,  and  face; 
his  cheeks  were  half-hidden  by  the  traditional  close- 
cropped  whisker,  and  the  rest  v^^as  an  ill-shorn  stubble. 
Traditional,  too,  was  the  small,  deep-set,  blue  eye,  the 
large,  kindly  mouth,  uttering  English  with  a  soft 
brogue,  which,  as  is  always  the  case  among  those 
whose  real  tongue  is  Irish,  had  no  trace  of  vulgarity. 
Indeed,  it  would  have  been  strange  that  vulgarity  of 
any  sort  should  show  in  one  who  had  perfect  man- 
ners, and  the  instinct  of  a  scholar,  for  this  preceptor 
was  not  even  technically  illiterate.  He  could  read 
and  write  English,  anc)  Irish,  too,  which  is  by  no 
means  so  common;  and  I  have  not  often  seen  a  man 
happier  than  he  was  over  Douglas  Hyde's  collection 
of  Connacht  love-songs,  which  I  had  fortunately 
brought  v/ith  me.  But  his  main  interest  v/as  in  his- 
tory— that  history  which  had  been  rigorously  excluded 
from  his  school  training,  the  history  of  Ireland.  I 
would  go  on  ahead  to  fish  a  pool,  and  leave  him  poring 
over  Hyde's  book;  but  when  he  picked  me  up, 
conversation  went  on  where  it  broke  off — somewhere 
among  the  fortunes  of  Desmonds  and  Burkes,  O'Neills 
and  O'Donnells.  And  when  one  had  hooked  a  large 
sea- trout,  on  a  singularly  bad  day,  in  a  place  where  no 
sea-trout  was  expected,  it  was  a  little  disappointing 
to  find  that  Charlie's  only  remark,  as  he  swept  the  net 
under  my  capture,  was  :   **  The  Clancartys  was  great 


46        LRISH  BOOKS  AND  IRISH  PEOPLE 

men  too.  Is  there  any  of  them  living?"  The  scholar 
in  him  had  completely  got  the  better  of  the  sportsman. 

Beyond  his  historic  lore  (which  v/as  really  consider- 
able, and  by  no  means  inaccurate)  he  had  many  songs 
by  heart,  some  of  them  made  by  Carolan,  some  by 
nameless  poets,  written  in  the  Irish  which  is  spoken 
to-day.  I  wrote  down  a  couple  of  Charlie's  lyrics 
which  had  evidently  a  local  origin ;  but  what  I  sought 
v/as  one  of  the  Shanachies  who  carried  in  his  m.emory 
the  classic  literature  of  Ireland,  the  epics  or  ballads  of 
an  older  day.  Charlie  Vv^as  familiar,  of  course,  with 
the  matter  of  this  **  Cssianic  "  literature,  as  we  all 
are,  for  example,  v/ith  the  story  of  Ulysses.  He  knew 
hov/  Oisin  dared  to  go  v/ith  a  fairy  wom.an  to  her  own 
land;  how  he  returned  in  defiance  of  her  warning; 
hov/  he  found  himself  lonely  and  broken  in  a  changed 
land;  and  how,  in  the  end,  he  gave  in  to  the  teaching 
of  St.  Patrick  ("  Sure  how  v/ould  he  stand  up  against 
it?"  said  Charlie),  and  was  converted  to  Christ.  But 
all  the  mass  of  rhymed  verse  which  relates  the  dia- 
logues between  Oisin  and  Patrick,  the  tales  of  Finn 
and  his  heroes  which  Oisin  told  to  the  Saint,  the  fierce 
ansvvers  with  v/hich  the  old  v/arrior  met  the  Gospel 
arguments — all  this  vvas  only  vaguely  familiar  to  him. 
I  was  looking  for  a  m.an  who  had  it  by  heart. 

The  search  for  the  repositories  of  this  knowledge 
leads  sometimes  into  strange  contrasts.  One  friend 
of  mine  lay  stretched  for  long  hours  on  top  of  a  roof 
of  sticks  and  peat-scraws  which  was  propped  against 
the  wall  of  a  rained  cabin,  v;hile  within  the  evicted 
tenant,  still  clinging  to  his  home  as  life  clings  to  the 
shattered  body,  lay  bedridden  on  a  lair  of  rushes,  and 
chanted  the  deeds  of  heroes ;  his  voice  issuing  through 


THE    SHANACHY  47 

tne  vent  in  the  roof,  at  once  windov/  and  chimney, 
from  the  kennel  in  which  was  neither  room  nor  light 
for  a  man  to  sic  and  record  the  verses.  My  own 
chance  was  luckier  and  happier.  It  came  on  a  day 
when  a  party  of  us  had  set  out  in  quest  of  a  remote 
mountain  lough.  Our  way  led  along  the  river,  and 
as  we  drove  up  to  vvhere  the  valley  contracted,  and 
the  tillage  land  decreased  in  extent  and  fertility,  the 
type  of  the  people  changed.  They  v/ere  Celts  and 
Catholics,  evident  to  the  least  practised  eye.  A  little 
further  still  from  civilisation  we  reached  the  fringe 
that  was  Gaelic  not  merely  in  blood ;  the  kindly  woman 
whose  cottage  warmed  and  sheltered  us  when  we 
returned  half-foundered  from  plunging  through  bogs 
was  an  Irish  speaker.  She  had  no  songs  herself,  but 
if  I  wanted  them  her  neighbour,  James  Kelly,  was  the 
best  of  company,  and  would  keep  me  listening  the 
length  of  a  night. 

I  pushed  my  bicycle  through  a  drizzle  of  misty  rain 
up  the  road  over  mountainous  moor,  before  I  saw  his 
cottage  standing  trim  and  v/hite  under  its  thatch  in  a 
screen  of  trees,  and  as  I  v/as  nearing  it,  the  boy  with 
me  showed  me  James  down  in  a  hollow,  filling  a 
barrov/  wiih  turf.  He  stopped  work  as  I  came  down, 
and  called  off  his  dog,  looking  at  me  curiously  enough, 
for,  indeed,  strangers  were  a  rarity  in  that  spot,  clean 
off  the  tourist  track,  and  away  from  any  thoroughfare. 
One's  presence  had  to  be  explained  out  of  hand,  and 
I  told  him  exactly  why  I  had  come.  He  looked  sur- 
prised and  perhaps  a  little  pleased,  that  his  learning 
should  draw  students.  But  he  made  no  pretence  of 
ignorance;  the  only  question  was,  how  he  could  help 
me.     Did  I  v/ant  songs  of  the  modem  kind,   or  the 


48       IRISH  BOOKS  AND  IRISH  PEOPLE 

older  songs  of  Finn  Mac-Cool  ?  If  it  was  the  latter,  it 
seemed  I  v/as  not  well  able  to  manage  the  common 
talk,  and  these  songs  were  v/rilten  in  **  very  hard  Irish, 
full  of  ould  strong  words.'* 

I  should  like  to  send  the  literary  Irishmen  of  my 
acquaintance  one  by  one  to  converse  with  James  Kelly 
as  a  salutary  discipline.  He  was  perfectly  courteous, 
but  through  his  courtesy  there  pierced  a  kind  of  tolera- 
tion that  carried  home  to  one's  mind  a  profound  con- 
viction of  ignorance.  People  talk  about  the  servility 
of  the  Irish  peasant.  Plere  was  a  man  who  professed 
his  inability  to  read  or  write,  but  stood  perfectly  secure 
in  his  sense  of  superior  education.  His  respect  for  me 
grew  evidently  v^hen  he  found  me  familiar  with  the 
details  of  more  stories  than  he  expected.  I  was  raised 
to  the  level  of  a  hopeful  pupil.  They  had  been  put 
into  English,  I  told  him.  **Oh,  ay,  they  v/ould  be, 
in  a  sort  of  a  way,"  said  James,  with  a  fine  scorn. 
Soon  v/e  broke  new  ground,  for  James  had  by  heart 
not  only  the  Fenian  or  Ossianic  cycle,  but  also  the 
older  Sagas  of  Cuchulain.  He  confused  the  cycles, 
it  is  true,  taking  the  Red  Branch  heroes  for  contem- 
poraries of  the  Fianna,  which  is  much  as  if  one  should 
make  Heracles  meet  Odysseus  or  Achilles  in  battle; 
but  he  had  these  earlier  legends  by  heart,  a  rare 
acquirement  among  the  Shanachies  of   to-day. 

Here  then  was  a  tj^pe  of  the  Irish  illiterate.  A  man 
somewhere  between  fifty  and  sixty,  at  a  guess;  of 
middle  height,  spare  and  well-knit,  high-nosed,  fine- 
featured,  keen-eyed ;  standing  there  on  his  own  ground, 
courteous  and  even  respectful,  yet  consciously  a 
scholar;  one  who  had  travelled  too — had  worked  in 
England  and  Scotland,  and  could  tell  me  that  the  High- 


THE    SHANACHY  49 

land  Gaelic  was  far  nearer  to  the  language  of  the  old 
days  than  the  Irish  of  to-day;  finally,  one  who  could 
recite  without  apparent  effort  long  narrative  poems  in 
a  dead  literary  dialect.  When  I  find  an  English  work- 
nicin  who  can  stand  up  and  repeat  the  works  of 
Chaucer  by  heart,  then  and  not  till  then  I  shall  see  an 
equivalent  for  James  Kelly. 

And  3'et  it  would  be  a  different  thing  entirely. 
Chaucer  has  never  survived  in  oral  tradition.  But 
in  the  West  of  Donegal,  whence  James  Kelly's  father 
emigrated  to  where  1  found  his  son,  every  old  person 
had  this  literature  in  mind,  and  my  friend  was  no 
exception.  It  is  among  the  younger  generation,  who 
have  been  taught  in  the  National  Schools  (surely  the 
most  ironic  of  all  titles),  that  the  language  and  the  his- 
tory of  the  nation  are  dying  out.  Yet  that  is  changing. 
For  instance,  James  Kelly's  son  reads  and  writes 
Irish,  and  on  another  day  helped  me  to  note  down 
some  of  his  father's  lore. 

For  it  was  late  when  I  came  first  to  the  house,  and 
though  the  Shanachie  pressed  me  (not  knowing  even 
my  name)  to  stay  the  night,  I  had  to  depart  for  that 
day,  after  I  had  heard  him  recite  in  the  traditional 
chant  some  staves  of  an  Ossianic  lay,  and  sing  to  the 
traditional  air  Cardan's  famous  lyric,  **  The  Lord  of 
Mayo."  We  drank  a  glass  of  whisky  from  my  flask, 
a  cup  of  tea  that  his  wife  made ;  and  as  we  went  into 
the  house  he  asked  a  favour  in  a  whisper.  It  was 
that  I  should  eat  plenty  of  his  good  woman's  butter. 
He  escorted  me  a  good  way  over  the  hill,  for,  said 
he,  when  I  had  come  that  far  to  see  him,  it  was  the 
least  that  he  should  put  me  a  piece  on  my  road,  and 
he  exhorted   me  to   come  again  for  **  a   good  crack 


50       IRISH  BOOKS  AND  IRISH  PEOPLE 

together.*'  And  if  1  deferred  visiting  him  for  another 
year  that  was  largely  because  1  did  not  like  to  face 
again  'this  illiterate  without  acquiring  a  little  more 
knowledge. 

What  came  of  my  second  visit  must  be  written  in 
another  paper.  But  here,  let  it  be  understood  this  is 
no  exceptional  case.  In  every  three  or  four  parishes 
along  the  Western  seaboard  and  for  twenty  miles 
inland,  from  Donegal  to  Kerr)^  there  is  the  like  of 
James  Kelly  to  be  found.  It  may  be  that  in  another 
fifty  years  not  one  of  these  Shanachies  v/ill  linger; 
education  will  have  made  a  clean  sv/eep  of  illiteracy. 
And  yet  again,  it  may  be  that  by  that  time,  not  only 
in  the  Western  baronies  but  through  the  length  and 
breadth  of  Ireland,  both  song  and  ctory  and  legend 
will  be  living  again  on  the  lips  and  in  the  hearts  of 
the  people.     Go  leigidh  Dia  sin. 


LITERATURE    AiVIONG    THE   ILLITERATES 

II 


THE  LIFE  OF  A  SONG 

HERE  v/as  a  great  ccntenlion  some  years 
ago  fought  out  in  a  law  court  between  the 
British    Museum    and    the    Royal    Irish 
Academy,    for    the    custody    of    certain 
treasure    trove,    gold   vessels    and   orna- 
ments disinterred  on  an  Irish  beach.       The  treasures 
v/ent  back,  as  was  only  right,  to  Ireland,  where  is  a 
rich  storehouse  of  such  things,  for  the  soil  has  been 
dug  over  in  search  for  the  material  relics  of  ancient 
art.     Yet  little  heed  has  been  paid  to  treasures  of  far 
greater  v/orth  and  interest,  harder  to  sell,  it  is  true,  but 
easier  to  coine  by— the  old  songs  and  stories   which 
linger  in  oral  tradition  or  in  old  manuscripts  handed 
down  from  peasant  to  peasant.     Only  within  the  last 
few  years  did  the  Irish  suddenly  awake  to  a  conscious- 
ness that  the  authentic  symbols,  or,  rather,  the  indis- 
putable proofs  of  the   national   existence   so   dear  to 
them,   were  slippmg  out  of  their  hands.     So  far  had 
the  heritage   perished,    so   ill   had  the  tradition  been 
maintained,    that    when   they   turned    to   revive    their 
expiring    language    and    literature,    the   first   question 
asked  was,   **  What   is  it   you   v/ould  revive?       Was 
there  ever  a  literature  in  Irish  or  merely  a  collection  of 
ridiculous   rhodomontade  ?       Is    there  a   lans^uare,  or 


52       IRISH  BOOKS  AND  IRISH  PEOPLE 

does  there  survive  merely  a  debased  jargon,  employed 
by  ignorant  peasants  among  themselves,  and  chiefly 
useful,  like  a  thieves'  lingo,  to  baffle  the  police?** 

These  were  the  questions  put,  and  not  one  in  a  thou- 
sand of  Irish  Nationalists  could  give  an  answer  accord- 
ing to  knowledge. 

Now,  matters  are  changed.  The  books  that  were 
available  in  print  have  been  read ;  the  v/ork  of  poets 
extant  only  in  manuscript  has  been  printed  and  widely 
circulated;  the  language  is  studied  with  zeal,  and  not 
in  Ireland  only,  but  wherever  Irishmen  are  gathered. 
Yet  nothing  has  so  strongly  moved  me  to  believe  that 
we  cherish  the  living  rather  than  pay  funeral  honours 
to  the  dead,  as  certain  hours  spent  with  a  peasant  who 
could  neither  write  nor  read. 

The  life  of  a  song — poets  have  said  it  again  and 
again  in  immortal  verse — is  of  all  lives  the  most  endur- 
ing. Kingdoms  pass,  buildings  crumble,  but  the  work 
which  a  man  has  fashioned  "  out  of  a  mouthful  of 
air**  defies  the  centuries;  it  keeps  its  .shape  and  its 
quivering  substance.  Strongest  of  all  such  lives  are 
perhaps  those  where  "  the  mouthful  of  air  "  is  left  by 
the  singer  mere  air,  and  no  more,  unfixed  on  paper  or 
parchment;  v/hen  the  song  goes  from  mouth  to  mouth, 
altering  its  contours  it  may  be,  but  unchanged  in 
essence,  though  coloured  by  its  immediate  surround- 
ings as  a  flower  fits  itself  to  each  soil.  Such  was  the 
song  that  I  had  the  chance  to  write  down,  from  lips  to 
which  it  came  through  who  knows  how  many  genera- 
tions. 

The  story  which  it  tells  is  among  the  finest  in  that 
great  repertory  of  legend  v/nich,  since  Ireland  began  to 
take  count  of  her  own  possessions,  has  become  fami- 


THE  LIFE  OF  A  SONG  53 

liar  to  the  world.  It  is  the  theme  of  a  play  in  the  last 
book  published  by  the  chief  of  modem  Irish  poets, 
Mr.  W.  B.  Yeats.  But  since  he  tells  the  story  in  a  way 
of  his  own,  and  since  it  is  none  too  well  known  even 
in  those  parts  of  Ireland  where  its  hero's  name  is 
a  proverb  (Comh  laidir  le  Cuchidain,  Strong  as  Cuchu- 
lain),  it  may  be  well  to  set  out  the  legend  here. 

Cuchulain,  the  Achilles  of  Irish  epic,  was  famous 
from  the  day  in  boyhood  when  he  got  his  name  by 
killing,  bare-handed,  the  smith's  fierce  watchdog  that 
would  have  torn  him.  The  ransom  for  the  killing  was 
laid  on  by  the  boy  himself,  and  it  was  that  he  should 
watch  Culann's  house  for  a  year  and  a  day  til]  a  pup 
should  be  grown  to  take  the  place  of  the  slain  dog. 
So  he  came  to  be  called  Cu  Chulain,  Culann's  Hound, 
and  by  that  name  he  w^as  known  when,  as  a  young 
champion,  he  set  out  for  the  Isle  of  Skye,  where  the 
warrior- witch  Sgathach  (from  whom  the  island  is 
called)  taught  the  crowning  feats  of  arms  to  all  young 
heroes  who  could  pass  through  the  ordeals  she  laid 
upon  them. 

There  was  no  trial  that  Cuchulain  could  not  support, 
and  the  fame  of  him  drew  on  a  combat  with  another 
Amazonian  warrior,  Aoife,  who,  in  the  story  that  1 
heard,  was  Sgathach's  daughter,  though  Lady  Gre- 
gory in  her  fine  book  Cuchulain  of  Muirthemne  gives 
another  version.  But,  at  any  rate,  Cuchulain  defeated 
Aoife,  and  she  gave  love  to  her  conqueror — whose 
passion  for  the  fierce  queen  was  not  strong  enough  to 
keep  him  from  Ireland.  When  he  made  ready  to  go, 
the  woman  warrior  told  him  that  a  child  v/as  to  be 
born  of  their  embraces,  and  she  asked  what  should  be 
done  with  it.     *'  If  it  be  a  girl,  keep  it,"  said  Cuchu- 


54       IRISH  BOOKS  AND  IRISH  PEOPLE 

Iain,  "  but  if  a  hoy,  wait  till  his  thumb  can  fill  this 
ring  " — and  he  gave  her  the  circlet—**  then  send  him 
to  me."     So  he  departed,  leaving  wrath  behind  him. 

The  child  born  was  a  son,  and  Aoife  reared  him  and 
taught  him  all  feats  of  arms  that  could  be  taught  to  a 
mortal,  except  one  only,  and  of  that  feat  only  Cuchu- 
lain  was  master  :  **  the  way,"  said  James  Kelly,  pre- 
facing his  ballad  with  such  an  explanation  as  I  am 
now  giving,  *'  there  would  be  none  could  kill  him  but 
his  own  father."  And  when  the  boy  had  learnt  all 
and  was  the  perfect  warrior,  Aoife  sent  him  out  to 
Ireland  under  a  pledge  to  refuse  his  name  to  any  that 
should  ask  it,  well  knowing  how  the  wardens  of  the 
coast  would  stop  him  on  the  shore.  It  fell  out  as  she 
purposed.  The  young  Connlaoch  defeated  champion 
after  champion  till  Cuchulain  him.self  went  dov/n,  and 
was  recognised  by  his  son.  But  the  pledge  tied  Conn- 
Iaoch*s  tongue,  and  only  when  he  lay  dying,  slain  by 
the  m.agic  throv/  v/hich  Aoife  had  withheld  from  his 
knowledge,  could  he  reveal  himself  to  his  father,  the 
great  and  childless  hero,  whose  lament  for  his  lost 
son  is  written  in  the  song  that  I  set  out  to  secure,  on  a 
day  of  sun  and  rain,  last  summer,  v/hen  great  soft 
clouds  drove  full  sail  through  the  moist  atmosphere, 
their  shadov/s  sv/eeping  over  brown  moor  and  green 
valley,  while  far  away  tov/ards  the  sea,  mountain 
peaks  rose  purple  and  amethystine  in  the  distance. 

Tv/ice  before  this  I  had  been  in  the  little  cottage  on 
Cark  Mountain;  first,  when  the  chance  rum.our  heard 
in  a  neighbouring  cabin  of  a  man  Vvrith  countless  songs 
and  stories  sent  me  off  to  investigate ;  and  for  a  second 
time,  when  I  had  come  back  v/ith  a  slightly  better 
knov/ledge  of  Gaelic  and  had  taken  down  a  few  verses 


THE    LIFE    OF    A   SONG  55 

of  the  poem.  These,  sent  to  an  Irish  scholar,  had 
sufhced  to  identify  the  ballad  with  one  printed  in  Miss 
Brooke's  Reliques  oj  Irish  Poetry,  a  characteristic  pro- 
duction of  the  latter  days  of  the  eighteenth  century, 
when  Macpherson,  with  his  adaptation  of  the  Ossianic 
poems,  and  Bishop  Percy,  with  his  gathering  of  old 
English  ballads,  had  set  a  fashion  soon  to  culminate 
in  Scott's  great  achievement. 

They  proved,  however,  not  identity  only  but  dif- 
ference; and  the  ballad  as  I  have  it  in  full  with  its 
nineteen  quatrains,  is  even  less  like  the  longer  version 
given  by  O'Halloran  to  Miss  Brooke,  than  the  open- 
ing stanzas  suggested.  In  them  the  variations  vvere 
mainly  textual,  and  when  I  read  out  O'Halloran's  ver- 
sion to  James  Kelly,  his  son,  a  keen  listener,  declared 
a  preference  for  the  printed  text.  But  the  old  m.an 
was  of  another  mind.  '*  It's  the  same  song,"  he  said, 
**sure  enough,  but  there's  things  changed  in  it,  and  I 
know  rightly  about  them.  Some  one  was  giving  it 
the  vv'ay  it  would  be  easier  to  understand,  leaving  cut 
the  old  hard  words.  And  I  did  that  m^yself  once  or 
tv/ice  the  last  day  you  were  here,  and  I  v/as  vexed 
after,  when  I  would  be  thinking  about  it.  And  this 
day  you  will  be  to  take  down  what  I  say,  let  you 
understand  it  or  not;  just  v/ord  for  v/ord,  the  right 
way  it  should  be  spoken." 

There  you  have  in  a  glimpse  the  custodian  of  legend. 
The  man  was  illiterate,  technically,  but  he  knew  by 
instinct,  as  his  ancestors  had  known  before  him,  that 
he  was  the  guardian  of  the  life  of  a  song;  he  recog- 
nised that  it  v/as  a  scripture  v/hich  he  had  no  right 
to  mutilate  or  alter.  He  had  to  the  full  that  respect 
for  a  work  of  literature  which  is  the  best  indication  of 


56       IRISH  BOOKS  AND  IRISH  PEOPLE 

a  scholar,  and  for  him  at  least  the  line  was  unbroken 
from  the  Ireland  of  heroes  and  minstrels  to  the  hour 
when  he  chanted  over  the  poem  that  some  bard  in 
the  remote  ages  had  fashioned. 

Little  wonder,  too,  for  his  own  way  of  life  was  close 
to  that  of  the  Middle  Ages.  Below  in  the  valley, 
where  the  S willy  River  debouches  into  its  sea  lough, 
was  a  prosperous  little  town  with  banks  and  railway ; 
but  to  reach  the  bleak  brown  moor  where  James 
Kelly's  house  stood,  you  must  climb  by  one  of  two 
roads,  each  so  rough  and  steep  that  a  bicycle  cannot 
be  ridden  down  them.  Here,  in  a  little  screen  of 
scrub  alders,  stands  the  cottage,  v/here  three  genera- 
tions of  the  family  live  together.  His  own  home  con- 
sisted simply  of  two  rooms  with  no  upper  story,  but  it 
was  trim  and  comfortable,  the  dresser  well  filled,  and 
the  big  pot  over  the  turf  fire  gave  out  a  prosperous 
steam.  The  son,  a  grown  man,  waited  from  his  turf- 
cutting  to  help  in  our  discussion ;  the  wife  was  abroad 
that  day,  and  one  daughter  was  just  starting  for  market 
with  a  web  of  homespun  cloth  which  they  had  dressed 
in  the  household.  The  spinning  wheel  stood  in  the 
corner;  but  another  girl  was  busy  near  the  fire  with 
more  modern  work,  hemming  shirts  with  a  machine 
for  a  Derry  factory,  and  the  bleached  linen  was  the 
only  thing  in  the  house  which  had  not  taken  on  the 
brown  tints  of  peat  smoke. 

James  Kelly  himself,  as  he  sat  by  the  fire  declaim- 
ing at  me,  was  all  browns  and  greys,  like  the  country 
outside  his  door ;  and  his  eyes  were  like  brown  streams 
running  through  that  peaty  mountain,  with  their  move- 
ment and  sparkle,  and  their  dark  depths.  At  other 
times  easy,  like  that  of  aill  Irish  peasants,  his  manner 


THE    LIFE    OF    A   SONG  57 

changed  and  grew  rough  and  imperious  when  the 
business  began.  I  must  not  interrupt  with  questions. 
I  must  write  down,  syllable  for  syllable,  that  the  song 
might  be  got  *'  the  right  way."  It  was  by  no  means 
easy  to  carry  out  these  directions,  for  the  poem  was 
written  in  an  Irish  not  spoken  to-day,  as  unlike  as  the 
Chaucerian  English  is  to  our  common  speech;  and 
even  to  v/rite  down  modern  Irish  by  ear  I  was  poorly 
qualified.  Things  were  made  harder,  too,  by  the 
manner  of  recitation,  as  traditional  as  the  words.  He 
chanted,  with  a  continuous  vocalisation,  and  while  he 
chanted,  elbow  and  knee  worked  like  a  fiddler's  or 
piper's  marking  the  time.  However,  with  persistence, 
I  got  the  thing  down,  letting  him  first  say  a  verse  fully 
through,  then  writing  line  by  line  or  as  near  as  I 
could ;  then  going  back  and  asking  questions  in  detail  : 
the  son  coming  to  my  rescue,  when  the  old  man  lost 
patience  (as  he  did  once  in  every  ten  minutes)  and 
interposing  usefully  in  our  discussions. 

For  there  were  endless  discussions  as  to  the  mecin- 
ing  of  words,  and  nothing  could  be  more  curious  than 
to  see  the  old  man's  endeavour  to  give  in  English  not 
merely  a  bare  rendering,  but  the  colour  of  every 
phrase.  It  made  me  realise  as  nothing  else  could 
have  done,  how  fine  was  his  feeling  for  the  shade  of 
a  word,  and  I  cannot  describe  his  dissatisfaction  with 
the  poor  equivalents  he  could  find.  He  was  happy 
enough  when  the  debate  drifted  into  an  exposition — 
always  addressed  to  his  son — of  the  uses  of  some  rare 
word  in  the  Irish,  the  manner  of  exposition  being  by 
citation  of  passages  from  other  songs,  or  phrases  that 
might  occur  in  talk.  I  have  listened  to  many  a  pro- 
fessor doing  the  same  thing  in  Greek  and  Latin,  but 

E 


58       IRISH  BOOKS  AND  IRISH  PEOPLE 

to  none  who  had  a  finer  instinct  for  the  business. 
Kelly's  vexation  came  when  he  had  to  *'put  English 
on  "  a  word  for  me,  and  the  obvious  equivalent  was 
not  the  right  one.  Sometimes  I  could  help ;  sometimes 
he  arrived  by  himself  at  what  satisfied  him,  though 
once  at  least  it  was  droll  enough.  We  were  at  the 
lines  where  Connlaoch,  dying,  says  to  his  father  :  '*  If 
I  could  give  my  secret  to  any  under  the  sun,  it  is  to 
your  bright  body  I  would  tell  it."  The  trouble  was 
about  the  phrase  **  bright  body,"  for  the  word  *'cneas" 
means  literally  **  skin,"  but  is  used  (just  like  XP^^ 
in  Homer)  to  signify  *'  person."  What  James  wanted 
to  convey  to  me  was  that  the  word  was  not  the  com- 
mon one  for  **  body,"  and  at  last  he  smote  his  thigh. 
**  Carkidge,"  he  cried,  **  it*s  carkidge  (carcase),  *  It  is 
to  your  clear  carkidge  I  would  tell  it.'  "  A  man  with 
less  instinct  for  literature  would  have  said  "  body  " 
at  once,  and  never  trouble  more;  but  James  knew  at 
once  too  much  and  too  little,  and  I  give  the  instance 
to  show  how  an  Irishman  unlettered  in  English  may 
be  deeply  imbued  with  the  true  spirit  of  letters  through 
a  literature  of  his  own. 

There  were,  however,  several  passages  where  I 
could  get  no  clear  account  of  the  meaning,  and  in 
some  I  have  since  found  by  comparison  with  the  text 
which  O'Halloran  provided  for  Miss  Brooke  that  Kelly 
had  got  the  words  twisted.  For  instance,  the  first 
stanza  opens  simply  : — 

"  There  came  to  us  a  stout  champion, 
The  hearty  champion  Connlaoch." 

But  of  the  next  two  lines  I  could  get  no  clearer  ren- 
dering than  that  **  he  just  came  in  full  through  these 


THE    LIFE    OF    A   SONG  59 

people  for  diversion  and  for  fun  to  himself."  Then 
the  ballad  continues  at  once — for  its  method  is  terse 
and  its  transitions  abrupt  throughout — to  give  us  the 
v/ords  of  the  men  who  meet  Connlaoch  on  his  land- 
ing :— 

"  Where  have  you  been,  O  tender  gallant, 

Riding  like  a  noble's  son? 

Mcthinks  by  the  way  of  your  coming, 

You  are  wandering  or  astray." 

And  Connlaoch  ansv^ers  the  taunt  and  the  challenge 
implied  : — 

"  My    coming    is   over    seas    from    the    land 
Of  the  High  King  of   the  World, 
To  prove   my  merry  prowess 
Athwart  the  high  chiefs  of   Erin." 

(It  seemed  to  me  characteristic  that  the  stock  epithet 
of  valour  should  be  *'  merry  "  or  **  laughing.")  The 
ballad  added  no  reply  (though  in  Miss  Brooke's  ver- 
sion at  this  point  there  is  a  dialogue  of  warnings),  but 
went  on  to  tell  in  the  shortest  possible  words  how 
Conall  Cearnach  ('*  the  Victorious  ")  rode  out  from 
Emain  Macha  and  met  the  challenger  : — 

"  Out   started    Conall,    not    weak   of    hand, 
To  get  news  of  the  noble's  son. 
Bitter   and  hard  was   the   way  of  it ; 
Conall  was  tied  by  Connlaoch." 

"  '  Bring  word  from  us  to  Hound's  head,' 
Said   the   King   in   fierce   sullen   tones, 
To   Dundalk  sunny  and  bright, 
To  the  Hound,   Dog's  jaw." 

Then  Cuchulain  (thus  described  by  versions  of  the 
nickname  won  when  he  broke  the  jaws  of  Culann's 
hound)  made  ansv/er  : — 


60       IRISH  BOOKS  AND  IRISH  PEOPLE 

"  Hard   for   us    is   hearing   of    the    captivity 
Of  the  man  whose  plight  is  told  ; 
And  hard  it  is  to  try  the  venom  of  blades 
With  the  warrior  that  bound  Conall." 

But  the  messenger  pleads  : — 

"  Do  not  think  but  to  go  to  the  rescue 

Of  the  destroying  keen  dangerous  warrior, 

Of  the  hand   that  had  no  fear  for  any, 

To  loose  him,  and  he  fettered." 

Then  (as  Miss  Brooke  in  the  majestic  manner  of  the 
eighteenth  century  puts  it) : — 

"  Then   with  firm  step   and  dauntless   air, 
Cucullin  went  and  thus  the  foe   addrest, 
Let  me,   O  valiant  knight  (he  cried), 

Thy  courtesy  request, 
To  me  thy  purpose  and  thy  name  confide." 

And  so  on  through  a  sonorous  description  of  dia- 
logue and  fight  till  : — 

"  At  length  Cucullin's  kindling  soul  arose, 
Indignant  shame  recruited  fury  lends; 
With  fatal  aim  his  glittering  lance  he  throws, 
And  low  on  earth  the  dying  youth  extends." 

Or,  as  I  translate  almost  literally  from  James  Kelly*s 
version,  which  is  considerably  briefer  than  the  text 
which  Miss  Brooke  has  so  volubly  expanded  : — 

"  Out  set  the  Hound  of  the  keen,  smooth  blade 
To  see  the  work  that  Conall  made, 
Till  he  pierced  with  a  bitter  blow. 
That  hero  youth  his  hardy  foe." 

That  is  all  we  are  told  of  the  fighting;  the  ballad 
passes  straight  to  a  terse  dramatic  dialogue,  which 
Cuchulain  opens  : — 


THE    LIFE    OF    A   SONG  61 

"  Champion,   tell  your  story, 

For   I   see  your   wounds   are  heavy  : 
'Twill  be  short  ere  they  raise  your  cairn, 
So  hide  your  testament  no  longer." 

**  That's  what  he  said  to  the  son,"  said  James  Kelly, 
finishing  the  verse,  and  beginning  afresh, 

"  Let  me  fall  on  my  face, 

For  methinks  'tis  you  are  my  father, 
And  for  fear  lest  men  of  Eir6  should  see 
Me  retreating  from  your  fierce  grapple." 

**  Then,**  said  James,  *'  the  son  spoke  for  to  tell 
him  the  reason  he  couldn't  spake  at  the  first  "  : — 

"  I   took  pledges  to  my  mother 

Not  to  give  my  story  to  any  single  man, 
If  I  would  give  it  to  any  under  the  sun, 
It  is  to  your  bright  body  I  would  tell  it." 

(**  Complimenting  him,  like,*'  said  James.)  Then 
he  recited  the  stanza  which  tells  by  implication  how  in 
the  long  duel  Cuchulain  was  at  last  driven  to  use  the 
irresistible  stroke  of  Sgathach's  teaching  : — 

"  I  lay  my  curse  on  my  mother, 
That   she   put  me   under   pledge ; 
But  if  it  were  not  for  the  feat  of  magic 
I  had  not  been  got  for  nothing." 

(It  is  a  fine  phrase  surely,  *'  You  had  paid  dear  in 
blood  before  you  mastered  me.") 

Cuchulain  answers  groaning,  with  a  wail  for  the 
lineage  that  is  cut  off  : 

"  I  lay  my  curse  on  your  mother. 

For  she  destroyed  a  multitude  of  young  ones ; 
And  because  the  treachery  that  was  in  her 
Left  your  smooth  fiesh  reddened." 


62       IRISH  BOOKS  AND  IFIISH  PEOPLE 

Then  comes,  with  the  boy's  dying  word,  the  revela- 
tion of  the  most  tragic  moment  in  the  fight. 

"  Cuchulain,  beloved  father, 

Is  it  not  a  wonder  you  did  not  know  me 
When  I  cast  my  spear  crooked  and  feebly 
Against  your  bush  of  blades." 

Where  will  you  find  a  finer  stroke  of  invention? 
The  boy,  tongue-tied  by  his  pledge,  knov/s  his  father 
and  feels  his  defence  failing  against  the  terrible  onset ; 
he  would  not,  if  he  could,  be  the  victor,  but  he  thinks 
of  a  way  within  the  honour  of  his  bond  which  may 
awaken  knowledge  of  him;  and  he  casts  his  javelin 
with  a  clumsiness  not  to  be  looked  for  in  the  champion 
**  that  tied  Conall."  It  is  useless,  the  battle  madness 
is  in  Cuchulain,  he  thinks  only  of  conquest,  an  end  to 
the  supple,  quick  parrying,  and  he  throws  the  gaebulg, 
a  spear  of  dragon's  bones  bristling  with  points  (his 
**  bush  of  blades  "),  with  the  magic  cast  that  there  is 
no  m^eeting.  And  now  there  is  nothing  left  to  him  but 
the  lamentation, 


"  Och,  och  !     Great  is  my  madness! 
I    lifting   here   my   young  lad  ! 
My  son's  head  in  my  one  hand, 
His  arms  and  his  raiment  on  the  other, 

'    I,   the  father  that  slew  his  son, 

May  I  never  throw  spear  nor  noble  javelin  ; 

The  hand  that  slew  its  son. 

May  it  win  torture  and  sharp   wounding. 

"  The  grief  for  my  son  I  put  from  me  never, 
Till  the  flagstones  of  my  side  crumble, 
It  is  in  me,  and  through  my  heart. 
Like  a  sharp  blaze  in  the  hoar  hill  grasses. 


THE    LIFE    OF    A   SONG  63 

"  If  I   and  my  heart's  Connlaoch 

Were  playing  our  kingly  feats  together, 
We  could  range  from  wave  to  shore 
Over  the  five  provinces  of  Erin." 

The  penuldmate  stanza,  with  its  magnificent  closing 
image  and  its  truly  /Eschylean  hyperbole,  is  not  even 
suggested  in  Miss  Brooke's  version.  It  is,  perhaps, 
the  finest  thing  in  the  poem;  but  I  hardly  know  any 
ballad  finer  as  a  piece  of  dramatic  narrative;  and  the 
resonant  verse,  strongly  rhymed  (in  the  Gaelic  asso- 
nances), and  copiously  stressed  with  alliteration,  bears 
out  the  theme. 

These,  I  trust,  are  critical  opinions.  But  if  the  col- 
lector v/ould  have  a  special  weakness  for  a  vase  which 
his  own  spade  had  unearthed,  I  may  be  prejudiced  in 
favour  of  the  poem,  which  I  got  in  the  sweat  of  my 
brow  from  very  probably';  the  one  man  living  who 
knew  it  in  that  form. 

Tellers  of  old  Irish  fairy  tales  about  enchanted 
princes,  magic  cocks  and  hens,  and  the  like,  are  still 
numerous ;  but  it  is  very  rare  to  find  a  man  who  keeps 
living  the  old  poetry  which  was  made,  perhaps,  in  the 
twelfth  century.  Yet  while  any  survive  the  tradition 
is  still  there;  the  song  still  lives,  for  I  did  not  spend 
my  hours  without  feeling  that  this  old  man  could 
respond  to  any  emotion  that  the  song-maker  put  into 
the  sound  and  the  meaning  and  the  associations  of  his 
words.  There  are  still  those  to  whom  the  Irish  even 
of  the  twelfth  century  is  no  dead  language.  Even  if  it 
were,  no  doubt  the  songs  made  in  it  might  still  be 
strong  in  life,  as  are  to-day  those  of  Homer  and  a 
hundred  others.  But  in  the  case  of  these  smaller 
literatures,   once  the  tongue  itself  has   ceased    to  be 


64       IRISH  BOOKS  AND  IRISH  PEOPLE 

heard,  dumbness  and  paralysis  fall  upon  what  might 
else  be  so  full  of  vitality.  And  a  song  has  more  than 
its  own  life,  it  has  power  to  quicken,  to  breed.  If 
any  one  considers  that  legend  of  the  son  and  father 
(found  in  many  languages,  yet  in  none,  I  think,  more 
finely  shaped),  it  is  easy  to  see  how  from  age  to  age 
it  may  revive  itself  in  new  forms,  entering  into  other 
shapes,  as  Helen's  figure  adorns  not  her  own  story 
only,  but  the  praise  of  a  thousand  women.  Let  it  be 
understood  that  this  legend  is  only  one  of  a  cycle,  and 
that  the  song  which  I  wrote  down  was  only  the  barest 
fraction  of  James  Kelly's  repertory.  Indeed,  he  was 
vexed  that  I  should  take  it  as  a  specimen,  for  he  him- 
self **  had  more  conceit  in  "  the  lays  that  tell  of  Finn 
and  his  companions,  and  I  could  have  filled  a  volume, 
and  maybe  several  volumes,  from  his  recitations. 

These  songs  may  die,  the  language  may  die,  the 
Irish  race  may  be  swallowed  up  in  England  and 
America.  But  it  is  my  belief  that  the  strong  intellec- 
tual lie  which  made  of  Ireland  a  home  of  the  arts 
before  the  Normans  came  across  channel  may,  like 
many  another  life  in  nature,  spring  after  centuries  of 
torpor  into  vigour  and  fertility  again.  That  is  the 
belief  and  hope  of  manj^  of  us;  but  nothing  has  ren- 
dered me  so  confident  in  it  as  to  find  this  work  of  a 
strong  and  fine  art  not  laid  aside  and  neglected,  but 
honoured  and  current  to-day,  and,  though  in  a  poor 
man's  cottage,  living  with  as  full  a  life  as  when  it  was 
chanted  at  the  feasts  of  princes. 


IRISH  EDUCATION  AND  IRISH  CHARACTER. 

DUCATION  in  Ireland  has  been  organised 
by  the  State  in  accordance  with  English 
ideas.  Had  English  influence  been  able 
to  bring  about  any  large  measure  of  con- 
formity between  the  two  countries,  there 
would  have  been  little  or  no  need  for  a  separate  paper 
on  moral  training  in  Irish  schools.  But  what  confor- 
mity there  is,  is  purely  superficial;  and  although  free 
development  has  been  hindered,  and  Irish  institutions 
for  teaching  are  less  characteristic  than  they  would 
have  been  if  entirely  left  to  themselves,  still  the  moral 
influences  which  emerge  wherever  pupils  and  teachers 
are  brought  together  reveal  themselves  in  Ireland,  and 
reveal  themselves  as  Irish.  The  object  of  this  paper, 
then,  is  to  illustrate,  so  far  as  possible,  the  nature  and 
the  symptoms  of  these  distinctive  influences. 

First  of  all,  it  may  be  said  broadly  that  no  ordinary 
person  in  Ireland  contemplates  the  possibility  of  teach- 
ing morality  apart  from  religion;  and  by  religion  is 
meant  emphatically  this  or  that  particular  creed. 
Almost  every  school  maintained  by  the  State  is 
managed  locally  by  a  clergyman,  who  appoints  the 
teacher,  and  public  feeling  is  so  strong  on  the  matter 
that  in  any  neighbourhood  even  a  small  group  of 
families  of  any  particular  denomination  is  always  pro- 
vided with  a  separate  school  of  its  own.  Of  late, 
indeed,  opinion  has  begun  to  agitate  for  associating 
the  laity  with  the  clergy  in  the  management  of  schools ; 


66       IRISH  BOOKS  AND  IRISH  PEOPLE 

but  this  does  not  indicate  any  desire  to  lessen  the 
importance  given  to  the  part  played  by  religion  in 
education. 

Further,  so  far  as  Catholic  Ireland  is  concerned,  an 
immense  proportion  of  the  teaching  both  in  primary 
and  secondary  schools  is  done  by  members  of  religious 
orders,  and  in  these,  of  course,  there  is  no  conception 
of  separating  moral  influences  from  religious.  There 
is,  however,  no  evidence  known  to  me  that  even  in 
the  few  Protestant  schools  which  are  partly  or  wholly 
under  lay  control  any  duties,  other  than  those  of  ordi- 
nary school  work,  are  inculcated  except  as  part  of 
a  Christian's  religious  obligations.  This  entire  state 
of  things  is  due  to  the  fact  that  positive  Christian  belief, 
and  the  practice  of  religious  observances,  are  every- 
where in  Ireland  very  general,  and  among  the  Catholic 
population  almost  universal.  It  is  also  hardly  neces- 
sary to  point  out  that  in  many  respects  the  standard 
of  Irish  morality  is  so  high  that  the  example  of  Ireland 
may  be  quoted  with  confidence  in  support  of  the  view 
which  makes  moral  teaching  necessarily  a  part  of 
religion. 

But  from  such  broad  generalities  there  is  not  much 
to  be  gathered,  and  I  proceed  to  examine  in  some  detail 
the  existing  institutions — beginning  at  the  top  with 
higher  education. 

It  follows  from  what  has  been  said  that,  in  the 
general  opinion  of  Irishmen,  there  can  be  no  positive 
moral  influence  where  there  is  no  religious  teaching; 
and  for  that  reason  a  university  without  a  school  of 
theology  or  arrangements  for  corporate  worship  is,  to 
Irishmen,  a  university  deficient  in  moral  safeguards. 
This  accounts  for  the  fact  that  Catholic  opinion  was 


IRISH  EDUCATION  AND  CHARACTER    67 

much  less  opposed  to  the  Protestant  University  of 
Dublin  than  to  the  more  modern  Queen's  Colleges, 
which,  designed  by  England  to  provide  for  her  wants 
of  Ireland,  excluded  religion  entirely  from  their  pur- 
view. This  provision  satisfied  no  one,  except  to  some 
extent  the  Presbyterians,  who  accepted  Queen's 
College,  Belfast,  with  some  alacrity,  though  in  prac- 
tice demanding  that  its  head  should  always  be  a 
staunch  professor  of  their  own  persuasion.  But 
Catholics  as  a  body  refused  to  accept  either  the  Univer- 
sity of  Dublin  with  its  Protestant  atmosphere  or  the 
**  godless "  Queen's  Colleges;  and'  since  Ireland  is 
mainly  a  Catholic  country,  and  the  National  Univer- 
sity has  not  yet  created  a  tradition,  it  is  clear  that  not 
much  can  be  gleaned  on  the  subject  of  Irish  ideas  of 
moral  training  from  Irish  universities. 

Yet  Trinity  College  is  well  worth  study,  for  in  it  we 
have  a  free  growth,  typifying  both  in  its  virtues  and  in 
its  defects  the  ruling  Protestant  class,  landed  and  pro- 
fessional. Here,  unquestionably,  the  chief  moral 
influence  is  that  of  the  Church,  felt,  as  at  Oxford, 
directly  through  the  chapel  services  and  sermons,  and 
indirectly  through  the  presence  of  a  large  body  of  theo- 
logical students.  The  second  of  these  influences  is 
specially  strong  in  Dublin,  because  these  students  have 
an  organisation  of  their  own  in  the  University  Theo- 
logical Society,  and  also  because  the  work  of  the 
Divinity  School  at  Dublin  comprises  much  that  is  done 
in  England  by  the  training  colleges.  I  should  there- 
fore be  inclined  to  put  the  positive  influence  of  dog- 
matic religion  higher  at  Dublin  than  at  Oxford. 

On  the  other  hand,  the  vaguer  humanitarian  enthu- 
siasms which  are  more  or  less  allied  to  Socialism,  and 


68       IRISH  BOOKS  AND  IRISH  PEOPLE 

with  which  the  High  Church  party  wilHngl)»  allies 
itself,  have,  I  think,  much  less  hold  in  Trinity  than  at 
the  English  universities;  though  the  movement  which 
sends  so  many  brilliant  young  Englishmen  into  work 
(temporary  or  permanent)  in  the  East  End  of  London 
has  its  parallel  in  the  recently  organised  Social  Service 
Society,  which  attempts  something  for  the  reclamation 
of  Dublin  slums.  Again,  in  regard  to  more  definitely 
political  aspirations,  Irish  Protestants  are  somewhat 
unfortunately  situated.  Trinity  as  a  whole  has  no 
sympathy  with  the  ideals  that  appeal  to  Ireland  as  a 
nation,  and  it  always  seems  to  lack  first-hand  touch 
with  the  best  English  thought,  whether  Liberal  or 
Tory.  This  isolation  from  the  main  movement  of  Irish 
thought  and  feeling  on  the  one  hand,  and  on  the  other, 
this  enforced  separation  from  the  current  of  English 
life,  keep  the  place  a  little  old-fashioned ;  and  to  gene- 
rate enthusiasm,  ideals  and  feelings  need  a  certain 
freshness.  If  it  be  held  (as  I  should  hold)  that  a  uni- 
versity's main  moral  function  is  to  produce  enthusiasts 
rather  than  merely  decent  citizens,  in  this  respect,  I 
think.  Trinity  fails. 

In  regard  to  the  less  direct  influences,  a  good  deal 
may  be  noted.  The  general  trend  of  life  in  Trinity  is 
towards  frugality,  just  as  at  Oxford  it  is  towards  extra- 
vagance. Consequently,  money  is  less  of  an  advan- 
tage, poverty  less  of  a  drawback  than  at  the  English 
universities ;  the  standard  of  living  is  more  uniform ; 
and  in  the  society  of  which  the  university  is  typical, 
and  which  it  influences,  respect  for  wealth  as  wealth 
is  noticeably  rare.  Again,  the  idea  of  education  is 
more  disciplinary  than  in  England.  Irishmen  go  to 
college,  not  to  acquire  culture  by  contact,  but  to  learn 


IRISH  EDUCATION  AND  CHARACTER    69 

certain  definite  things;  and  the  university,  in  its 
anxiety  to  find  out  if  the  task  is  being  learnt,  multipHes 
examinations.  The  same  idea  pervades  all  Irish 
education — the  old-fashioned  demand  for  a  positive 
result  in  knowledge;  and  if  it  leads  to  an  excessive 
value  set  upon  these  tests,  it  also  goes  far  to  discourage 
idleness. 

In  another  matter  Trinity  College  is  typical  of  Irish 
ideas  generally.  Games  are  simply  taken  as  games, 
not  as  a  main  business  of  life  in  which  success  may 
even  have  a  marketable  value.  Everybody  recognizes 
their  physical  use,  and  more  than  that,  their  use  as  a 
means  of  bringing  men  together.  But  nobody  in  Ire- 
land, save  here  and  there  a  stray  apostle  of  English 
notions,  talks  of  the  moral  lessons  to  be  acquired  by 
fielding  out  or  by  patient  batting.  Compulsory  games 
at  school  are  practically  unknown;  nobody  plays 
unless  he  wants  to;  so  that  the  duffer  does  not  expe- 
rience the  questionable  moral  advantage  of  physical 
discomfort  and  frequent  humiliation,  and  the  naturally 
painstaking  or  excellent  athlete  gets  no  more  than  his 
fair  chance  of  exercising  his  gifts.  And  these  are  less 
likely  to  have  an  undue  importance  in  their  possessor's 
eyes,  because  they  will  not  of  themselves  lead  him  to  a 
position  of  great  distinction  in  an  Irish  university. 

Unfortunately,  Trinity  College  is  the  only  place  in 
Ireland — unless  perhaps  a  saving  clause  should  be 
made  for  Queen's  College,  Belfast — which  offers  what 
is  meant  by  a  university  life.  The  National  Univer- 
sity, whether  in  Dublin,  Cork  or  Galway,  brings  young 
men  together  only  in  classes  and  in  one  or  two  debat- 
ing societies.  Yet  even  so,  I  question  whether,  in 
some  ways,  life  does  not  beat  stronger  in  it  than  in 


70       IRISH  BOOKS  AND  IRISH  PEOPLE 

Trinity ;  whether  the  moral  influences  proper  to  a  uni- 
versity, the  enthusiasm,  the  contagion  of  generous 
ideas,  are  not  here  more  strongly  felt.  The  reason  for 
this  view  must  be  given. 

Trinity  has  never  been  the  University  of  Ireland. 
It  is  ceasing  to  be  the  University  of  Protestant 
Ireland,  for  Protestants,  who  can  afford  to  do  so,  send 
their  sons  increasingly  to  Oxford  or  Cambridge,  and 
Trinity,  which  has  not  known  how  to  create  a  true  and 
special  function  for  itself,  is  becoming  merely  a  cheap 
substitute  for  these  English  institutions.  And  the 
reason  for  this  is  a  moral  reason  which  goes  to  the  root 
of  many  questions  connected  with  Irish  education. 
Should  Irish  schools  and  colleges  seek  to  educate 
citizens  for  the  Empire,  or  citizens  for  Ireland?  During 
the  last  half  century,  while  the  Imperialist  idea  has 
been  developing  in  England,  Trinity  has  thrown  all  its 
moral  weight  into  support  of  that  idea.  But  the  Impe- 
rialist idea  in  England  is  very  different  from  the  same 
idea  as  viewed  in  Canada  or  New  Zealand  or  Aus- 
tralia; and  universities  in  these  countries  address 
themselves  particularly  to  local  needs.  In  the  section 
of  Ireland  which  Trinity  represents,  local  patriotism  is 
held  to  conflict  with  Imperial  patriotism,  and  one  has 
to  observe  that  Trinity's  Imperialism  is  forwarding 
tendencies  which  are  leaving  her  drained.  Nationa- 
lists may  respect  the  sincerity  of  convictions  so  pressed 
in  defiance  of  a  local  interest;  but  a  university,  whose 
main  emotional  appeal  is  directed  towards  evoking 
primarily  an  enthusiasm  for  England,  cannot  be  of 
much  use  to  Nationalist  Ireland.  Catholics  may  (and 
do)  respect  the  thorour^hness  of  the  religious  teaching, 
and  the  strong  grip  which  Protestantism  keeps  on  the 


IRISH  EDUCATION  AND  CHARACTER     71 

university;  but  a  university  which  inculcates  morals 
through  a  Protestant  religion  is  not  precisely  suitable 
to  Catholics.  Yet  Catholics  and  Nationalists  alike 
infinitely  prefer  a  university  or  a  college  or  a  school 
with  strong  Protestant  beliefs,  or  strong  Imperialist 
patriotism,  to  an  institution  with  neither  beliefs  nor 
patriotism  at  all.  The  colourless  and  merely  scho- 
lastic ideals  of  the  Queen's  Colleges,  and  the  huge 
examining  machinery  known  as  the  Royal  University, 
typified  in  their  total  lack  of  moral  influences  all  that 
was  v/orst  in  the  educational  system  under  which  Ire- 
land labours. 

I  pass  to  a  brief  examination  of  the  boarding  schools, 
institutions  which  have  never  flourished  in  Ireland. 
Nearly  all  Protestants  and  many  Catholics,  if  they  can 
afford  it,  send  their  sons  to  England  to  be  taught.  The 
ideals  of  the  English  Public  School  have  reacted  so 
strongly  upon  Irish  Protestant  schools  that  nothing 
need  be  said  of  these — not  one  of  v/hich  has  ever, 
within  living  memory,  had  a  continuous  prosperity. 
The  important  Catholic  schools  are  managed  by  the 
great  teaching  orders,  especially  by  the  Jesuits,  and 
managed  at  astonishingly  low  cost.  They  give  every- 
where more  than  value  for  the  fees  which  they  receive. 
No  unendowed  institution  could  compete  with  them; 
and  it  practically^  comes  to  this,  that  the  regular 
clergy  subsidise  education  with  their  own  unpaid 
labour  and  even  with  their  own  funds,  in  order  to 
maintain  their  influence  over  the  faith  and  morals  of 
their  country.  Whether  it  might  be  more  to  the 
advantage  of  Irish  parents  to  pay  more  and  get  some- 
thing different,  is  another  question:  but  those  of  us 
who  least  like  the  exclusive  delegation  of  these  impor- 


11       IRISH  BOOKS  AND  IRISH  PEOPLE 

tant  functions  to  the  priesthood,  cannot  but  admire 
the  thoroughness  and  consistency  with  which  the 
Cathohc  priesthood's  idea  is  carried  out.  It  would 
be  hard  to  overstate  the  moral  effect  of  that  vast  orga- 
nised system  of  self- sacrifice  and  self -suppression. 

Three  or  four  points  may  be  noted  in  relation  to 
these  schools.  One  is,  that  in  all  classrooms  and  play- 
grounds, a  master  is  always  present.  Compeiring  this 
with  the  system  in  vogue  at  many  English  schools, 
under  which  a  boy  out  of  school  hours  is  always  forced 
to  live  in  public  by  rules  which  compel  him  either  to 
be  playing  some  game  or  looking  on  while  others 
play,  I  prefer  the  system  of  frank  supervision,  as  leav- 
ing more  individual  freedom  and  choice  of  pursuits, 
and  as  making  serious  bullying  impossible.  Generally, 
the  idea  that  it  is  good  for  a  boy  to  be  knocked  about 
without  stint  is  foreign  to  Irish  ideas.  A  pleasant  and 
characteristic  feature  of  Jesuit  schools  is  the  habit  of 
telling  off  some  boy  to  act  as  companion  and  cicerone 
to  a  newcomer  for  his  first  week  or  fortnight ;  and  the 
ridiculous  English  fashion  which  prescribes  that  the 
smallest  fag  should  be  described  as  a  **  man  "  is 
unknown.  Christian  names,  not  surneimes,  are  used 
generally.  The  unpopularity  of  boarding  schools  in 
Ireland  is  due  to  the  great  value  set  upon  home  life ; 
and  an  Irish  boarding  school  is  far  less  distinct  from 
home  life  than  an  English  one. 

English  eyes  would  be  surprised  and  a  good  deal 
shocked  by  the  presence  of  a  billiard  table  in  every 
playroom ;  yet  it  may  fairly  be  argued  that  it  is  wise  to 
limit  the  number  of  things  that  have  the  fascination 
of  the  forbidden.  A  more  serious  criticism  would 
address  itself  to  the  permitted  slovenliness.       Untidi- 


IRISH  EDUCATION  AND  CHARACTER     73 

ness  amounts  to  a  national  vice  in  Ireland,  and, 
though  one  may  overstate  its  gravity,  the  secondary 
schools  could  and  should  do  much  more  to  remedy 
this  national  defect  than  they  are  at  present  doing. 
At  one  first-class  Irish  establishment — admirably 
equipped  with  buildings,  playground,  and  all  other 
appliances — boots  used  to  go  unblacked  from  one  end 
of  the  month  to  the  other.  The  boys  who  come  here 
come  largely  from  the  well-to-do  farming  class,  in 
whose  homes,  in  many  ways  so  pleasant  and  worthy 
of  respect,  there  is  often  a  lamentable  lack  of  that 
charm  which  comes  of  notable  housewifery.  The 
young  men  who  return  from  this  school  will  be  less 
apt  than  they  should  be  to  value  good  housewifery  in 
their  wives  and  mothers. 

But  of  all  sinners  in  this  regard  the  State  is  the  chief 
offender.  Under  the  Code  of  the  National  Board  of 
Education  a  national  schoolmaster  or  mistress  is  bound 
to  teach  cleanliness  and  decency  by  precept  and 
example.  He  or  she  is  paid  an  average  wage  (without 
allowances)  of  thirty  shillings  or  one  pound  a  week 
according  to  sex ;  and  out  of  that  an  appearance  befit- 
ting superior  station  has  to  be  maintained — for  in  Ire- 
land the  schoolmaster  has  always  a  position  of  some 
dignity.  For  the  school  the  State  provides  four  bare 
walls,  a  roof,  not  always  weatherproof,  and  a  few 
desks.  Firing  is  not  provided.  Decoration  is  subject 
to  inspection,  and  any  picture  which  can  be  held  to 
have  a  religious  or  remotely  political  bearing  is  a  gross 
offence  against  the  Code.  It  follows,  in  practice,  that 
bare  walls  are  kept  bare,  though  not  clean;  and  let  it 
be  remembered  that  Catholicism,  if  left  to  itself,  in 
education  always  trusts  greatly  to  the  appeal  to  the  eye, 

F 


74       IRISH  BOOKS  AND  IRISH  PEOPLE 

In  every  Catholic  school  uncontrolled  by  the  State  the 
emblems  of  religion  are  everywhere  present.  National 
schools  under  State  control,  even  in  places  where 
there  is  not  a  Protestant  child  within  twenty  miles, 
are  rigorously  forbidden  the  use  of  any  such  embel- 
lishment. On  the  other  hand,  Protestant  schools 
which  would  gladly,  and,  as  I  think,  most  laudably, 
furnish  themselves  with  pictures  recalling  such 
memories  as  the  shutting  of  the  Derry  gates,  come 
under  the  same  tyranny  of  compromise.  Taste  and 
culture  are  the  expression  of  an  individuality,  and 
individuality  is  forbidden  to  Irish  teachers  in  State 
employ.  The  State  puts  a  schoolmaster  into  a  school- 
house,  without  adequate  payment  for  himself,  with- 
out adequate  provision  either  for  building  or  the  up- 
keep of  building;  it  bids  him  to  keep  it  clean,  but 
pays  no  servant  to  wash  or  sweep;  and,  while  enjoin- 
ing the  absence  of  dirt,  it  checks  and  hampers  that 
desire  to  decorate,  which  is  the  positive  side  of  order 
and  taste.     The  result  is,  broadly,   slatternly  schools. 

There  could  hardly  be  a  better  moral  influence  in 
Ireland  than  tastefully  and  brightly  decorated  schools, 
cleanly  kept.  But  to  secure  this  the  State  must  pro- 
vide money,  and  must  give  individual  freedom. 
Instead  of  that,  it  adapts  its  institution  to  the  lowest 
standard  of  living;  and  the  raggedest  child  out  of  the 
dirtiest  cottage  will  probably  be  in  full  keeping  with 
his  environm.ent  when  he  takes  his  place  in  class. 

The  same  tyranny  of  compromise  sterilises  the  whole 
teaching  on  the  moral  side.  Nothing  must  be  taught 
anywhere  which  could  offend  any  susceptibility — 
except  in  the  hour  licensed  for  the  teaching  of  denomi- 
iiational  religion.     There  must  be  no  appeal  to  Irish 


IRISH  EDUCATION  AND  CHARACTER     73 

patriotism,  whether  it  be  of  Protestant  or  Catholic. 
Irish  history  may  not  be  taught  as  a  subject,  and,  until 
lately,  anything  bearing  on  it,  however  remotely,  was 
tabooed.  The  poem  Breathes  there  a  man  with  soul 
so  dead  was  struck  out  of  a  lesson  book,  lest  it  should 
encourage  sedition.  To-day  certain  accepted  books 
on  Irish  history  may  be  used  as  readers ;  the  Irish  lan- 
guage may  be  taught,  and  is  taught;  and  gradually 
with  these  changes  new  moral  influences  are  coming 
in.  Irish  children  are  being  encouraged  to  remember 
their  nationality.  Yet,  meanwhile,  the  teacher,  who 
is  to  instruct  them  in  the  duties  of  a  good  citizen,  is 
debarred  from  taking  any  part  in  local  politics,  from 
serving  on  any  local  council.  He  is  forbidden,  in 
fact,  to  be  himself  a  good  citizen ;  forbidden  to  be  any- 
thing more  than  the  colourless  instrument  of  a  system 
of  compromise  and  countercheck.  Nothing  is  more 
certain  than  this,  that  to  get  a  good  teacher  you  need 
a  man's  whole  personality;  you  must  enlist  all  his 
beliefs  and  his  feelings  in  the  exercise  of  that  moral 
function  of  education  which  can  never  be  fulfilled  by 
a  mere  machine  for  imparting  the  rudiments.  Man 
everywhere,  but  especially  in  Ireland,  is,  as  Aristotle 
said,  a  political  animal.  1  he  State  in  Ireland,  when 
organising  education,  tries  as  far  as  possible  to  elimi- 
nate the  man  and  produce  the  pedagogue. 

Take,  for  contrast  with  all  this,  the  purely  native 
institution,  now  unhappily  extinct,  of  the  old  **  classi- 
cal academies  '*  kept  in  the  country  parts  of  Munster 
by  private  laymen.  In  the  eighteenth  century,  and  on 
into  the  nineteenth,  these  men  kept  alive  the  tradition 
of  Irish  popular  poetry,  sometimes  with  a  real  gift. 
For  good  or  for  bad  they  were  persons  of  character 


76       IRISH  BOOKS  AND  IRISH  PEOPLE 

and  of  talent,  and  the  last  of  them  is  alive,  though  he 
keeps  school  no  longer.  He  taught  boys  who  had 
learnt  the  rudiments  at  the  ordinary  national  school, 
and  who  wished  to  carry  on  their  studies  with  a  view 
either  to  the  priesthood  or  to  medicine.  He  was  paid 
only  by  the  fees  of  his  scholars,  who  were  either  the 
sons  of  farmers  about  him,  or  of  men  living  at  a  dis- 
tance, who  sent  their  children  to  be  part  of  the  family 
in  some  farm  where  they  had  kinship  or  acquaintance. 
Thus  existence  for  these  scholars  was  divided  between 
the  home  life  of  a  farm  and  the  hours  of  school. 
There  was,  however,  a  small  element  of  what  in  Ire- 
land were  called  *'  poor  scholars  '* — boys  from  the  less 
prosperous  North  and  West,  who  came  (sometimes 
walking  the  whole  journey)  to  get  learning  gratis.  To 
them  teaching  was  never  refused,  and  their  board  was 
provided  by  the  farmers,  who  **  would  be  snatching 
them  from  one  and  other,'*  since  they  assisted  the 
other  children  in  preparing  tasks. 

Now,  in  the  school  which  my  friend  has  described  to 
me,  there  was  no  formal  teaching  of  anything  but  the 
prescribed  subjects.  But  literature  would  be  lying 
about — Haverty's  History  oj  Ireland,  and  the  Nationa- 
list papers  of  the  day — and  the  teacher  was  there 
always  ready  to  expound  and  answer  questions.  Him- 
self a  fighting  politician  (a  member  of  the  Fenian  orga- 
nisation, whose  name  is  still  sacred  throughout  Ire- 
land), he  was  careful  never  to  draw  in  or  compromise 
his  pupils ;  but  to  teach  them  the  story  of  their  country 
and  discuss  it  with  them  was  part  of  his  natural  occu- 
pation. He  taught  Irish  also,  the  tongue  readiest  to 
him,  for  he  held  that  Irishmen  should  know  their  own 
language ;  but  the  essential  business  of  his  school  was 


IRISH  EDUCATION  AND  CHARACTER     77 

teaching  the  simple  old-fashioned  curriculum,  Latin, 
mathematics,  and  some  Greek.  Yet  because  he  was 
a  man  who  loved  and  valued  knowledge  for  its  own 
sake,  and  loved  and  valued  literature,  it  is  probable 
that  he  gave  a  more  real  training  to  the  mind  than  is 
achieved  by  the  most  modern  system  of  hand  and  eye 
culture  and  the  rest  of  it.  He  taught  neither  religion 
nor  morals,  but  his  teaching  assumed  throughout, 
what  his  example  showed,  that  a  man  should  be  true 
and  thorough  in  what  he  professed  to  believe,  and 
should  be  ready  at  all  times  to  make  sacrifices  for 
principle.  Such  a  school  had  the  only  moral  influence 
which  in  Ireland  has  ever  counted  for  much — the 
influence  of  a  strong  personality,  acting  in  allicince 
with  the  influences  of  a  fully  realised  religion  and  of 
an  ordered  family  life. 

I  sketch  a  more  concrete  picture  that  always  rises  in 
my  mind  with  a  ray  of  hope,  when  I  think  of  educa- 
tion in  Ireland.  Out  of  doors,  winter  twilight  falling 
on  a  wild  landscape  within  hearing  of  the  Atlantic 
surf ;  the  man  of  the  house  coming  out  to  talk  to  me,  a 
handsome  Irishman  of  the  old  school,  frieze-clad,  with 
the  traditional  side  whiskers,  the  humorous  eye  and 
mouth.  We  talked  for  a  while  in  the  cold,  then 
**  Gabh  i  leith  isteach,"  he  said,  **  for  I  hear  you  have 
the  Irish."  As  I  paused  in  the  door  to  phrase  the 
Gaelic  salutation,  more  devout  and  courteous  than 
would  come  to  my  lips  in  any  other  tongue,  I  was 
astonished  at  the  company  gathered  in  the  long  low 
room.  Chairs  were  set  by  the  wide  hearth  of  course, 
and  from  one  of  them  the  woman  of  the  house  rose 
to  greet  me;  a  settle  ran  along  the  side  wall,  and  its 
length  was  filled  with  men  and  women  blotted  against 


78       IRISH  BOOKS  AND  IRISH  PEOPLE 

the  dusk  background.     But  the  centre  of  the  picture 
was  a  narrow  deal  table  set  in  the  middle  of  the  room, 
with  candles  on  it,  and  benches  on  each  side,  and  on 
the  benches  fully  ten  children  busy  with  books  and 
copies,       "Are  these  your  burden?"   I  asked  in  the 
quaint  Irish  phrase.       "  A  share  of  them,"   the  mcin 
answered;  and  then  I  understood  that  some  belonged 
to  other  neighbours,  and  that  it  was  a  mutual  arrange- 
ment for  friendliness  and  help.     None  of  the  children 
budged ;   there  they  were,    drilled  and   disciplined   at 
their   work,  in   the  middle  of   the   room,    while   their 
elders  sat  and  chatted   quietly.       I  have  never   seen 
elsewhere  anything  which  so  filled  my  conception  of 
what  a  home  should  be,  as  that  farmhouse  in  Corca- 
bascinn — so  full   of  order  and  gfood   governance,   yet 
so  free  of  constraint,  so  full  of  welcome,  yet  so  lack- 
ing in  expense  or  display.     For,  understand,  we  who 
were  strangers  were  brought  (much  against  my  will) 
into  the  state-room  or  parlour  beyond  the  party  wall, 
and  drink  was  pressed  upon  us  hospitably.     But  the 
neighbours   who  had  come   there  (and  came  daily,    I 
fancy)  came  neither  to  eat  nor  drink   (unless  maybe 
tea  might  be  brewing)  but  simply   to  sit  and  smoke 
and  talk,  and  watch  that  their  children  got  their  lessons 
properly.       And    at    the    end,    perhaps    before    they 
parted,  perhaps  when  the  family  was  alone,  the  rosary 
would  be  said  by  the  turf  fire,  that  made,  winter  or 
summer,  the  centre  of  all  that  pleasant  existence. 

It  is  a  pity  to  think  of  how  poorly  the  National 
school,  to  which  those  children  would  go  with  their 
tasks  in  the  morning,  seconds  the  help  which  this 
home  life  gives  it.  Easily  could  the  school — which 
takes  whatever  real  light  it  has  from  the  home,  just  as 


IRISH  EDUCATION  AND  CHARACTER    79 

it  depends  for  warmth  on  the  few  turf  which  scholars 
bring  daily  along  with  their  books — reflect  sound  and 
fruitful  ideas  on  to  the  home  through  the  children.  It 
could  teach  the  children  and  the  parents,  not  only  the 
political,  but  the  economic  history  of  their  own  coun- 
try; it  could  teach  them  what  has  been  done  in  Ireland, 
what  has  succeeded,  what  has  failed,  and  why;  it 
could  teach  them,  who  are  already  proud  of  being 
Irish,  to  have  new  reasons  for  their  pride;  it  could 
teach  them,  who  are  already  willing  to  do  their  best 
for  Ireland,  into  what  channels  the  driving  force  of 
that  willingness  may  be  poured. 

Outside  of  definite  religion,  the  only  fruitful  source 
of  educational  ideas  connected  with  the  moral  order 
that  I  see  in  Ireland  is  the  Gaelic  League.  This  orga- 
nisation, founded  to  save  from  extinction,  and  to 
revive  into  new  prosperity  the  national  language  of 
Ireland,  based  itself  entirely  upon  a  moral  appeal. 
It  appealed  to  Irishmen  as  they  were  proud  of  their 
race,  to  save  the  most  distinctive  symbol  of  their 
nationality ;  and  the  appeal  met  with  an  extraordinary 
promptness  of  response.  But  to  stimulate  and  pro- 
mote the  movement,  it  was  found  necessary  to  widen 
the  propaganda.  Irishmen  were  urged  to  learn  Irish, 
and  to  speak  Irish  because  of  pride  in  their  country; 
the  same  organisation  soon  began  to  teach  that  an 
Irishman  who  set  an  example  of  drunkenness,  or  gave 
an  occasion  of  it,  not  only  sinned  against  himself,  but 
against  his  country.  Vulgar  and  indecent  literature 
was  denounced  as  un-Irish;  Irish  dances  were  advo- 
cated, not  only  for  their  admirable  grace  and  their  his- 
toric interest,  but  also  because  it  was  held  that  dances 
like  the  waltz,  departed  from  the  austere  standard  of 


80       IRISH  BOOKS  AND  IRISH  PEOPLE 

Irish  morality.  Irish  men  and  women  were  taught  to 
buy  goods  of  Irish  manufacture  by  the  people  who 
taught  them  to  learn  the  language,  on  the  ground  that 
if  the  Irish  nation  continued  to  ebb  away  out  of  Ire- 
land, nationality  and  language  must  perish  together. 
Thus  through  the  medium  of  a  propaganda  which 
at  first  sight  would  seem  merely  literary  and  archaeo- 
logical, many  practical  issues  of  life  were  related  to  a 
purely  educational  purpose.  There  is  no  doubt  that 
the  Gaelic  League,  now  a  widespread  and  solidly 
established  organisation,  spending  on  the  whole,  per- 
haps, £30,000  or  £40,000  a  year  on  its  enterprise,  has 
done  as  much  to  promote  temperance,  and  to  further 
Irish  industries,  as  it  has  accomplished  in  its  peculiar 
task  of  reviving  the  old  tongue.  Primarily  a  teaching 
institution — for  each  of  the  League's  eight  hundred 
branches  exists  to  hold  classes  for  Irish  study — it  has 
linked  with  the  linguistic  teaching  a  moral  idea.  The 
reaction  has  been  mutual,  for  there  is  more  intelligent 
thought  on  the  methods  of  linguistic  teaching  in  the 
Gaelic  League  than  one  would  easily  find  in  all  the 
schools  and  universities  of  Ireland.  The  appeal  to 
pride  of  race  has  quickened  intelligence  no  less  than 
enthusiasm. 

It  is  a  very  remarkable  fact,  that  the  great  teaching 
order  of  the  Christian  Brothers  has  taken  up  the  teach- 
ing of  Irish  and  generally  the  Gaelic  League*s  whole 
propaganda  more  thoroughly  than  any  other  organisa- 
tion in  Ireland;  very  remarkable,  for  their  practical 
success  is  so  conspicuous  that  Protestant  clergymen 
have  repeatedly  from  the  pulpit  appealed  for  extra 
support  to  Protestant  schools  whose  pupils,  as  one 
preacher  said  in  my  hearing,  were  being  ousted  in  all 


IRISH  EDUCATION  AND  CHARACTER    81 

competition  for  employment  by  the  lads  from  the 
Christian  Brothers'  schools.  \A/hatever  the  post  was, 
the  preacher  said,  this  body  of  lay  Catholics  seemed 
always  to  have  a  candidate  specially  prepared  for  it. 
One  of  the  greatest  institutions  in  charge  of  that  order 
is  the  industrial  school  at  Artane,  near  Dublin,  where 
eight  hundred  boys  are  being  prepared  for  different 
trades.  Every  single  one  of  those  boys  is  now  being 
taught  Irish ;  that  is  to  say,  a  linguistic  training  with  a 
special  appeal  to  the  learner's  patriotism  has  been 
superimposed  on  the  ordinary  rudiments.  It  is  a 
great  experiment  made  by  enthusiasts  who  are  also 
teachers  with  an  intensely  practical  bent. 

It  is  too  early  even  to  forecast  the  eflect  which  is 
likely  to  be  produced  upon  Irish  education  generally 
by  the  new  university  colleges  set  up  under  Mr.  Bir- 
rell's  Act.  Yet  this  may  be  said.  Irish  education 
needs  reform  from  the  top  downwards,  not  from  the 
bottom  upwards.  It  has  lacked  idealism,  and  these 
universities  in  which  Ireland,  whether  of  the  north 
or  the  south,  will  be  free  to  express  its  own  character, 
can  and  should  set  up  ideals  which  will  govern  every 
school  in  the  country.  1  rinity  College  has  been  free 
to  follow  its  own  bent,  and  its  eyes  to-day  are,  in 
scriptural  phrase,  **  on  the  ends  of  the  earth."  Pri- 
mary education,  secondary  studies,  as  governed  by 
the  machinery  controlled  through  the  Board  of  Inter- 
mediate Education,  and  university  teaching  as  directed 
and  rewarded  through  the  Royal  University,  have  all 
in  the  last  resort  been  inspired  by  Englishmen  who 
thought  it  very  desirable  that  Irish  boys  and  girls 
should  learn  to  read  and  write  and  cipher,  and  that 
young  men   and   young   women   should  equip   them- 


82        IRISH  BOOKS  AND  IRISH  PEOPLE 

selves  for  clerkships  in  the  civil  service,  but  who  never 
for  one  instant  realised  that  the  end  of  education  is 
divergence  not  conformity — to  elicit,  whether  from  the 
race  or  from  the  individual,  a  full  and  characteristic 
development.  In  twenty  years  perhaps  a  paper  of 
interest  may  be  written  to  show  the  positive  results  of 
education  upon  Irish  character.  At  present  the  most 
noticeable  facts  are  negative,  and  may  be  summed  up 
by  affirming  a  total  lack  of  correspondence  between 
the  system  employed  and  the  needs  and  qualities  of 
the  Irish  people. 

1907. 


THE  IRISH  GENTRY. 

T  the  height  on  the  struggle  over  the  Home 
Rule  Bill,  there  was  published  a  book 
interesting  as  the  biography  of  a  remark- 
able individual,  but  no  less  interesting  as 
depicting  the  crucial  moment  in  the  his- 
tory of  an  aristocracy.  Colonel  Moore  wisely  entitles 
the  life  of  his  father  simply  An  Irish  Gentleman.  Ver- 
satile, eloquent,  quick-tempered  and  lovable,  exces- 
sive in  generosity,  excessive  in  courage  and  self-confi- 
dence, with  the  racecourse  for  his  ruling  passion  and 
horsemanship  for  his  supreme  achievement,  George 
Henry  Moore  was  the  paragon  of  his  class.  He  dis- 
played in  the  highest  degree  those  qualities  on  which 
the  Irish  gentry  prided  themselves  and  which  they 
most  admired  :  he  shared  the  prestige  and  power  of 
Irish  landlords  when  prestige  and  power  were  at  their 
height;  and  he  confronted  the  decisive  hour  when  he, 
and  men  like  him,  had  to  choose  between  the 
interest  of  their  country  and  the  interest  of 
their  class.  There  he  separated  himself  from  his 
fellows ;  he  parted  from  all  to  whom  he  was  bound  by 
ties  of  immediate  advantage,  of  pleasure,  of  associa- 
tion, of  affection,  and  he  threw  in  his  lot  with  Ireland. 
He  saw  first  the  moral  bankruptcy  of  his  own  class, 
then  their  widespread  financial  ruin;  and  though  he 
helped  to  break  their  political  power,  and  in  so  doing 
earned  the  general  love  of  his  countrymen,  yet  the 
troubles  which  beset  the  landlord  class  did  not  spare 


'^ 


84       IRISH  BOOKS  AND  IRISH  PEOPLE 

iiim,  and  he  died,  broken-hearted,  forty-three  years 
ago,  at  the  beginning  of  a  struggle  which  is  not  ended 
yet.  It  is  well  worth  while  to  consider  the  circum- 
stances of  that  stormy  career. 

First  a  brilliant  schoolboy,  then  an  idle  law  student, 
George  Henry  Moore  was  driven  to  travel  by  the  com- 
plications of  a  passionate  love  affair,  and  he  travelled 
adventurously,  being  a  pioneer  of  exploration  in  the 
Caucasus  and  Syria.  Sketches  reproduced  in  the 
book  show  that  he  could  draw  no  less  well  than  he 
wrote.  Returning  to  Ireland  at  the  age  of  twenty- 
seven,  he  devoted  himself  entirely  to  hunting  and  rac- 
ing, and  few  men  were  better  known  on  the  turf,  nor 
were  there  even  in  the  West  of  Ireland  more  desperate 
riders  than  his  brother  and  himself.  George  Henry  was 
carried  oflF  the  field  at  Cahir  in  1843  to  all  appearance 
dead ;  he  was  alive  enough  to  hear  discussion  as  to 
his  burial  Augustus,  less  lucky,  died  of  a  fall  he  took 
riding  Mickey  Free  in  the  Grand  National  two  years 
later.  The  brothers  were  closely  bound  to  each  other 
in  affection,  and  th.is  was  a  heavy  blow  to  the  sur- 
vivor; but  George  Moore  continued  to  race,  and  in 
1846  made  the  coup  of  his  life,  winning  £10,000  on 
**Coranna"  for  the  Chester  Cup.  He  sent  £1,000  of  it 
home  for  distribution  among  his  tenants,  2ind  there 
was  soon  sore  need  of  the  money,  for  that  year  saw 
the  second  and  disastrous  failure  of  the  potato  crop. 
The  Irish  Famine  made  the  turning-point  in  Moore's 
history,  as  in  that  of  his  class.  The  catastrophe  which 
brought  him  into  public  life  and  into  the  service  of  his 
country  demonstrated,  cruelly  enough — though  this 
was  the  least  of  its  cruelties — the  futility  of  the  Irish 
gentry  as  a  whole. 


THE  IRISH  GENTRY  85 

By  the  shock  of  his  brother's  death  in  1845  Moore's 
mind  had  been  iTirned  to  serious  thoughts.  Matter 
was  not  lacking.  The  report  of  the  Devon  Commis- 
sion upon  Irish  land,  joined  to  the  first  failure  of  the 
potato  crop — with  its  accompaniment  of  distress  and 
widespread  agrarian  crime — gave  any  Irish  landlord 
food  for  reflection,  and  in  March,  1846,  when  a 
vacancy  occurred  in  the  representation  of  Mayo, 
Moore  came  forward  as  a  Whig  candidate.  Ihe 
whole  landlord  interest  was  at  his  back,  but  a  Repealer 
opposed  him,  and  O'Connell's  influence  carried  the 
day.  There  were  fierce  encounters,  the  landlords  march- 
ing their  tenants  to  the  poll  under  guards  of  soldiers,  the 
popular  side  falling  upon  these  escorts  and  sometimes 
carrying  off  the  voters — or  enabling  them  to  escape. 
One  of  Moore's  friends,  Mr.  Browne,  afterwards  Lord 
Oranmore,  wrote  :  **  I  now  see  we  owe  our  lives  to 
the  priests,  as  they  can  excite  the  whole  people  against 
us  whenever  they  like.  Whatever  may  be  the  cause, 
Ireland  needs  reconquering." 

That  was  a  typical  expression  of  the  gentry's  view. 
Plainly  Ireland  was  in  rebellion  when  landlords  could 
no  longer  carry  their  tenants  to  the  polls  to  vote  as  the 
landlord  directed.  Moore  however  differed  from  ihe 
generality  of  Irish  landlords  in  one  important  respect. 
He  was  not  divided  by  religion  from  the  people  over 
whom  he  ruled,  and  he  can  never  have  had  Mr. 
Browne's  feeling  of  aloofness  from  Ireland  as  a  coun- 
try which  might  need  reconquering  to  re-establish  the 
ascendancy  of  the  **  Enghsh  garrison";  nor  was  it 
natural  to  him  to  distrust  the  priests  as  leaders  of  a 
separate  and  subject  race. 

In  the  autumn  of   1846,  when  the  threat  of  famine 


86       IRISH  BOOKS  AND  IRISH  PEOPLE 

had  become  a  certainty,  Moore  came  home  to  Mayo, 
where  there  was  grim  business  to  be  done.  His 
tenants,  on  an  estate  running  up  into  the  wild  Partry 
mountains,  numbered  five  thousand  souls.  For  iheir 
benefit  he  utilised  far  more  of  his  winnings  on 
**  Coranna  '*  than  the  tithe  which  he  had  originally 
ear-marked;  and  not  one  of  all  these  his  dependants 
died  of  want  in  that  outlandish  region,  though  in 
places  far  less  remote  death  was  ravenous.  He  was 
chairman  of  the  Relief  Board  for  the  whole  county, 
and  slaved  at  his  task — not  harder  than  other  land- 
lords in  other  parts  of  Ireland.  But  his  methods  were 
more  drastic,  his  view  of  the  situation  clearer  Folk 
must  have  rubbed  their  eyes  and  perhaps  stopped  to 
think  twice  when  the  owner  of  **  Wolfdocr,**  of 
**  Anonymous,"  and  a  score  of  other  famous  horses, 
wrote,  in  answer  to  a  request  for  his  annual  subscrip- 
tion to  the  local  races,  that  he  thought  the  county  of 
Mayo  **  as  little  fit  to  be  the  scene  of  such  festivities 
as  he  to  contribute  to  their  celebration.** 

But  Moore  did  not  content  himself  with  mere  admini- 
stration of  relief.  He  saw  that  the  English  Govern- 
ment was  apathetic  and  incompetent  to  face  so  terrible 
an  affliction,  and  he  took  in  hand  to  create  within  his 
own  class  an  organised  force  of  Irish  opinion  to  bind 
together  the  ruling  Irishmen  for  the  good  of  Ireland. 
In  company  with  his  friend  and  kinsman,  Lord  Sligo, 
he  **  travelled  through  twenty-seven  counties  and  per- 
sonally conferred  with  most  of  the  leading  men  in  Ire- 
land on  the  urgent  necessity  of  a  united  effort  to  save 
the  sinking  people.**  The  result  was  that  between 
sixty  and  seventy  members  of  Parliament  and  some 
forty  peers  pledged  themselves  to  endeavour  to  secure 


THE  IRISH  GENTRY  87 

united  action  upon  measures  regarding  Ireland  in  the 
new  session.  On  the  14th  of  January,  1847,  the  Irish 
landlord  class  held  such  a  muster  as  had  not  been 
seen  since  the  Union.  **  Nearly  twenty  peers,  more 
than  thirty  members  of  Parliament,  and  at  least  six 
hundred  gentlemen  of  name  and  station  took  part  in 
it.  The  meeting  called  on  Government  to  prohibit 
export  of  food  stuffs  and  to  sacrifice  any  sum  that 
might  be  required  to  save  the  lives  of  the  people." 
It  passed  thirty  resolutions  without  dissension;  and 
then  some  one  asked  what  was  to  be  done  if  the 
Government  refused  to  adopt  any  of  their  suggestions. 
Would  Irish  members  then  unite  to  vote  against  the 
Government?  To  this,  Irish  members  refused  to 
pledge  themselves,  and  Moore,  as  he  said  afterwards, 
**  saw  at  a  glance  that  the  confederacy  had  broken 
down." 

That  was  the  end  of  the  revolt  of  the  Irish  gentry. 
It  was  really  the  decisive  moment  of  their  failure ;  dis- 
organised and  futile,  they  went  down  by  scores  in  the 
ruin  of  the  Encumbered  Estates  Court,  while  their 
tenants  were  marking  with  their  bones  a  road  across 
the  Atlantic.  As  for  the  landlords  who  were  popular 
leaders,  within  a  few  months  after  that  great  assembly, 
Daniel  O'Connell,  who  had  proposed  the  first  resolu- 
tion, died  in  Rome,  heart-broken.  A  few  months 
more  and  Smith  O'Brien,  the  mover  of  another  reso- 
lution, headed  a  rebellion  in  sheer  despair. 

Smith  O'Brien  had  twenty  years  of  parliamentary 
life  behind  him  when  he  was  driven  to  the  wild  protest 
of  insurrection.  Twenty  years  of  the  same  experience 
were  to  bring  Moore  to  a  very  similar  attitude ;  but  in 
1847  Moore  was  hopeful  of  building  up  in  Parliament 


88       IRISH  BOOKS  AND  IRISH  PEOPLE 

the  nucleus  of  an  Independent  Irish  Party.  When  the 
dissolution  came,  in  1847,  he  stood  for  a  second  time, 
but  as  an  Independent,  and  his  work  in  the  famine 
times  carried  at  least  its  recognition.  Every  single 
elector  who  went  to  the  poll  gave  one  of  his  two  votes 
to  the  Independent.  He  went  to  Westminster  and 
denounced  with  equal  energy  the  agrarian  murders, 
which  were  then  rife  in  Ireland,  and  those  organs  of 
publicity  in  England  which  sought  to  magnify  these  out- 
rages into  an  indictment  against  the  Irish  nation.  The 
ferment  of  indignation  against  English  methods  had 
not  yet  died  out  in  the  hearts  of  Irish  landlords.  Lord 
Sligo,  writing  to  Moore  concerning  the  controversy 
which  followed,  used  these  words  :  **  I  believe  that 
The  Times  did  much  to  cause  the  feeling  w!..ich 
resulted  in  landlord  and  parson  shooting;  it  will  end 
by  turning  us  all  into  Repealers.'*  If  only  it  had  ! 
But  Moore  got  no  help  from  the  Icundlord  class,  and  the 
well-to-do  Catholic  professional  men  with  v/hom  he 
was  principally  allied  proved  themselves  unable  to 
resist  the  temptations  of  ofHce  and  of  personal  interest. 
In  the  days  of  Sadleir  and  Keogh  he  fought  a  desperate 
fight  against  Whig  place-seekers ;  his  reward  was  to  be 
finally  unseated  (in  1857)  on  an  election  petition,  the 
charge  being  that  spiritual  intimidation  had  been  exer- 
cised on  his  behalf  by  the  priests.  As  Colonel  Moore 
observes,  if  a  landlord  threatened  his  tenants  with  dis- 
favour, which  meant, eviction,  that  was  **  only  a  legiti- 
mate exercise  of  their  rights  of  property*';  but  if  a 
priest  told  his  flock  that  a  man  would  imperil  his  soul 
by  selling  his  vote  or  prostituting  it  to  the  use  of  a 
despot,  the  candidate  whom  that  priest  supported 
would  lose  his  seat  and  be  disqualified  for  re-election. 


THE  IRISH  GENTRY  89 

From  this  time  onward  George  Henry  Moore  found 
himself  heading  the  same  way  as  Smith  O'Brien  had 
gone.  In  1861  he  told  the  Irish  people  that  if  they 
desired  freedom  they  must  take  a  lesson  from  Italy; 
they  must  *  *  become  dangerous  '  * ;  and  he  advocated 
the  formation  of  a  new  Irish  volunteer  force  to  emulate 
that  of  1782.  Nothing  came  of  this;  but  after  the 
American  war  a  new  movement  grew  up,  not  this  time 
among  the  landlords  or  the  professional  men,  nor  coun- 
tenanced by  the  priests,  but  nursed  in  the  fierce  heart 
of  the  people.  Ireland  had  become  dangerous. 
Colonel  Moore  recognises  rightly  the  difference 
between  the  Fenian  organisation  and  the  Young  Ire- 
Icind  movement  which  had  preceded  it.  Both  were 
idealistic,  but  the  idealism  of  1848  was  **  the  inspira- 
tion of  a  few  literary  gentlemen,  poets,  and  writers." 
Smith  O'Brien,  its  titular  head,  was  influenced  pro- 
foundly by  the  aristocratic  conception  of  his  rightful 
place  as  representing  the  Kings  of  Thomond. 
Fenicinism  was  democratic;  it  was  officered  largely 
by  men  who  had  themselves  fought  in  the  most  stub- 
born of  modern  wars  and  who  had  seen  what  Irish 
regiments  could  do  in  the  citizen  levies  of  Federals  and 
Confederates.  It  was  spontaneous,  and  it  was  "strong; 
the  measure  of  its  strength  is  given  not  by  the  few 
flickering  outbreaks  easily  suppressed,  but  by  the 
terror  which  it  inspired,  and  by  the  change  which  it 
wrought  in  the  spirit  of  the  people.  Moore  when  he 
took  the  step,  extraordinary  for  a  man  in  his  position, 
of  enrolling  himaelf  in  that  sworn  and  secret  conspiracy 
can  hardly  have  failed  to  foresee  the  collapse  of 
Fenianism  as  a  fighting  force;  but  he  recognised  that 
(in  his  son's  words)  **  the  old  complacent  toleration  of 

G 


90       IRISH  BOOKS  AND  IRISH  PEOPLE 

schemers  and  dishonest  politicians  had  vanished  and 
a  sturdy  independence  had  taken  its  place." 

With  the  advent  of  that  spirit  the  power  of  the  Irish 
landlords  was  doomed.  They  had  made  their  choice; 
when  they  might  have  made  common  cause  with  the 
whole  people  of  Ireland  they  had  refused  to  rise  beyond 
their  immediate  personal  advantage  and  the  interests 
of  their  class.  Moore,  who  was  of  themselves,  who 
shared  all  their  pleasures,  who  loved  them,  was  forced 
to  take  a  hand  in  their  overthrow.  From  1858  onward 
he  had  been  almost  entirely  out  of  politics,  living  the 
life  of  a  popular  country  gentleman,  racing  and  hunt- 
ing more  successfully  than  ever;  his  most  famous 
horse,  **  Croagh  Patrick,**  ran  in  the  'sixties.  But  in 
1868  he  flung  all  this  aside,  sold  his  horses,  and  under- 
took to  fight  the  alliance  of  Whig  and  Tory  which  had 
dominated  County  Mayo  in  the  landlord  interest  for 
ten  years. 

I  shall  have  the  question  settled  (he  said)  whether  one  lord  shall 
drive  a  hundred  human  souls  to  the  hustings,  another  fifty,  another 
a  score ;  whether  this  or  that  squire  shall  call  twenty,  or  ten,  or 
five  as  good  men  as  himself  "  his  voters  "  and  send  them  up  with 
his  brand  on  their  backs  to  vote  for  an  omadhaun  at  his  bidding. 

He  did  settle  it.  Mayo  beat  the  landlords  then,  and 
Mayo  became  the  cradle  of  popular  movements  ever 
after.  This  most  typical  of  Irish  land-owning  gentle- 
men had  been  forced  to  sever  himself  from  his  class 
and  even  to  injure  his  class,  and  it  was  not  by  advo- 
cacy of  self-government  that  he  estranged  so  close  a 
friend  as  Lord  Sligo.  Fintan  Lalor*s  policy,  rejected 
by  the  Young  Irelanders  in  1846,  was  beginning  to 
take  hold  in  1 868 ;  the  movement  for  self-government 
was  becoming  linked  on  to  the  driving  force  of  land- 


THE  IRISH  GENTRY  91 

hunger.  In  the  eyes  of  Lord  SHgo  and  all  his  class 
Tenant  Right  meant  Land'lord  Wrong,  and  Moore 
himself  was  not  exempt  from  that  feeling.  He  suf- 
fered indeed,  for  rents  that  he  had  reduced  to  a  figure 
fixed  by  the  tenants*  own  arbitrators  were  withheld 
from  him.  Yet  he  knew  clearly  that  it  was  necessary 
for  the  country,  and  not  more  necessary  than  just,  to 
secure  the  tenants  in  their  holdings.  No  one  disputes 
now  that  he  was  right.  But  the  last  thing  he  desired 
was  to  abolish  the  landlords.  If  they  did  not  like  the 
leadership  of  the  priests  **  they  have,**  he  said,  **  a 
remedy  left;  let  them  make  themselves  more  popular 
than  the  priests.  If  the  landlords  will  make  common 
cause  with  the  people,  the  people  will  make  common 
cause  with  them.'*  There  was  never  a  truer  word 
spoken,  but  it  fell  on  closed  ears. 

Moore  himself  broke  the  landlords*  power  at  the 
polls;  their  infinitely  greater  power,  proceeding  from 
control  of  the  land,  was  broken  by  another  Mayo  man, 
Michael  Davitt,  the  evicted  peaseint  from  Straide, 
close  by  Moore  Hall.  That  fight  was  bound  to  come 
when  Moore *s  warning  cind  the  warning  of  men  like 
him  was  set  at  nought.  What  a  change  it  has  made  ! 
and  what  has  been  lost  to  Ireland  ! 

Moore  died  in  1870.  His  last  year  of  life  saw  a  hope 
that  Presbyterian  farmers  of  the  North,  interested  in 
Tenant  Right,  who  had  been  temporarily  allied  to 
Catholics  in  the  struggle  for  Disestablishment,  might 
unite  .solidly  with  the  Nationalists.  Even  the  Protes- 
tant gentry  afforded  numerous  supporters  to  Butt*s 
Home  Rule  policy  at  its  outset.  But  of  this  nothing 
serious  came.  The  Land  Act  of  1870  was  ineffective, 
and  it  seemed  that,  in  spite  of  Fenianism,  all  would 


92        IRISH  BOOKS  AND  IRISH  PEOPLE 

go  on  as  before.  Throughout  the  'seventies  the  land- 
lord class  was  in  undisturbed  supremacy.  Country 
gentlemen  still  talked  in  good  set  phrase  about  **  the 
robbery  of  the  Church  *  * ;  in  actual  fact  they  were  very 
complacently  and  competently  helping  to  administer 
its  new  constitution.  Agriculture  was  prosperous  and 
rents  v/ent  high»  though  the  harsh  and  overbearing 
landlord  was  condemned  by  his  fellows.  This,  how- 
ever, was  poor  consolation  to  the  tenants.  In  the 
county  where  I  was  brought  up,  one  landlord  was  a 
name  of  terror,  and  there  was  no  redress  from  his 
tyranny,  until  at  last  the  peasantry  found  it  for  them- 
selves. The  grim  old  man  died  fighting  hard  before 
his  brains  were  dashed  out  on  the  roadside,  and  two 
innocent  people  were  killed  along  with  him;  but  no 
sane  person  could  fail  to  perceive  that,  within  five 
years  of  his  taking  off,  the  whole  district  was  improved 
out  of  knowledge.  The  moral  to  be  drawn  was  only 
too  obvious;  yet  none  of  the  landlords  drew  it;  the 
established  interest  of  a  class  is  too  strong  a  thing  for 
that  class  to  shake  themselves  out  of  its  influence. 

The  men  of  that  generation^ — how  well  I  remember 
them  !  most  vividly  perhaps  as  they  used  to  come  in 
to  church  on  Sunday  rriorning,  when  the  ladies  of  their 
families  addressed  themselves  to  devotions  kneeling, 
while  the  men  said  their  prayers  standing,  peering 
mysteriously  into  their  tall  hats — a  strange  ritual,  of 
which  traces  may  be  observed  at  the  House  of  Com- 
mons, but  nowhere  else,  I  fancy,  on  earth.  On  week 
days  they  lived  an  orderly,  dignified  existence  in  their 
big  old-fashioned  houses,  leaving  home  little,  though 
the  more  cultivated  zimong  them  had  travelled  in  their 
youth  and  knew  thoroughly  some  foreign  country.    In 


THE  IRISH  GENTRY  93 

their  own  orbit  they  had  power,  leisure,  and  defer- 
ence, all  of  which  set  a  stamp  upon  them  ;  individuality 
had  great  scope  to  develop,  and  an  able  man  among 
them  was  a  man  made  for  government.  One  such 
stands  out  in  my  memory.  Stormy  tales  were  told  of 
his  youth,  but  from  himself  no  one  heard  a  whisper  of 
these  far-off  exploits;  small,  exquisitely  neat,  finely 
made  and  finely  featured,  he  was  courteous  cind  gentle- 
spoken  with  all;  but  he  was  of  those  quiet  creatures 
who  breed  fear.  I  cannot  imagine  the  situation  of 
power  of  responsibility  from  which  he  would  have 
shrunk,  or  to  which  he  would  have  been  unequal; 
neither  can  I  imagine  him  anxious  in  the  pursuit  of 
office.  That  was  Pamell's  type.  Pamell's  strength 
appears  to  have  Iain  precisely  in  that  self-confidence 
which  was  a  law  to  itself  and  which  no  prestige  of 
fame  or  authority  could  shake  or  overawe.  The  men 
who  might  have  been  Ireland's  leaders  were  men 
extraordinarily  suited  for  the  conduct  of  affairs,  but  as 
a  class  they  had  been  thrown  out  of  their  natural  rela- 
tion. Castlereagh,  who  in  his  cold  efficiency  had 
much  in  common  with  Parnell,  accomplished  a  despe- 
rate deed  when  he  made  the  Union  through  them.  He 
committed  their  honour  to  justify  for  all  time  that 
transaction.  If  those  who  condemned  the  Union  were 
not  traitors,  then  the  class  from  whom  it  was  bought 
with  cash  and  titles  stood  convicted  of  infamy;  and 
since  the  heart  of  Ireland  loathed  and  detested  Castle- 
reagh's  work,  the  whole  body  of  the  Irish  gentry  found 
themselves  inevitably  estranged  from  the  heart  of  Ire- 
land. On  one  side  was  the  interest  of  a  class — and 
not  merely  the  material  interest  but  the  interest  of  its 
honour,   which  sought  a  justification  in  the  name  of 


94       IRISH  BOOKS  AND  IRISH  PEOPLE 

loyalty ;  on  the  other  wels  the  interest  of  Ireland ;  and 
the  landlord  who  chose  the  side  of  Ireland  severed 
himself  necessarily,  as  Moore  had  to  do,  from  his  own 
friends  and  kin. 

For  years  now  there  has  been  moving  through  many 
minds  in  Ireland  the  question  whether  this  state  of 
things  must  permanently  endure.  Is  that  estrange- 
ment inevitable  ?  I  at  least  think  otherwise.  Through- 
out the  last  two  decades  of  the  nineteenth  century 
landlord  and  tenant  were  opposed  in  a  struggle  for 
definite  material  interests;  it  was  a  fight  not  only  for 
free  conditions  of  tenure  but  for  the  reduction  of  rent, 
if  not  for  its  total  abolition.  A  way  of  peace  was 
found  in  State-aided  land  purchase,  and  in  a  recon- 
stitution  of  the  whole  agricultural  order.  The  land- 
lords, where  they  have  been  bought  out,  have  not  even 
the  duty  of  rent  collecting.  How  will  this  aifect 
their  traditional  attitude,  which  calls  itself  loyalty  to 
the  English  connexion,  but  which  I  interpret  rather  as 
a  traditional  justification  of  the  Union  and  of  the  here- 
ditary landlord  policy?  If  self-government  is  estab- 
lished without  dissolution  of  the  Union,  is  it  not  rea- 
sonable to  suppose  that  there  will  be  a  change  in 
men's  dispositions? 

The  question  involved  is  really  more  serious,  though 
of  far  less  political  importance,  than  that  of  Ulster. 
Whatever  happens,  the  industrial  community  of  Bel- 
fast and  its  district  is  not  going  to  run  away.  That 
element  will  not  be  lost  to  Ireland ;  it  is  too  strong,  too 
well  able  to  assert  itself ;  and  it  is  anchored  by  its  inte- 
rest. The  ex-landlords,  now  that  their  occupation  is 
gone,  are  bound  to  Ireland  only  by  habit  and  attach- 
ment.      At  present  they  fulfil  no ,  essential  function ; 


THE  IRISH  GENTRY  95 

and  it  will  be  open  undoubtedly  for  the  gentry  once 
more  to  make  an  error  mischievous  to  Ireland  and 
disastrous  to  themselves.  Ihey  may  take  up  the  line 
of  unwilling  submission,  of  refusal  to  co-operate,  of 
cold-shouldering  and  crying  down  the  new  Parliament 
and  the  new  Ministry.  Social  pressure  may  be  exer- 
cised to  keep  men  from  seeking  election,  and  so  to 
perpetuate  the  existing  severance  between  the  leisured 
and  wealthier  classes  and  the  in  a  in  body  of  the  nation. 
There  will  be  strong  tendencies  in  this  direction.  But 
on  the  other  hand  I  think  that  among  the  men  who 
have  grown  up  under  the  new  order  there  is  an  increas- 
ing willingness  to  accept  the  change.  One  friend  of 
mine — ^no  politician,  and,  like  all  non-politicians,  a 
Unionist — said  tO'  me  lately  that  he  would  be  rather 
disappointed  if  Home  Rule  did  not  become  law — he 
was  **  curious  about  it";  and  he  added,  **  1  think  a 
great  many  like  me  have  the  same  feelmg."  Others 
probably  have  a  more  positive  outlook,  and  desire  to 
take  an  active  part  in  the  public  life  of  their  country; 
and  there  will  be  a  strong  desire  among  Irish  Nationa- 
lists to  bring  in  at  the  outset  those  who  wish  to  come 
in.  On  the  other  hand,  no  less  certainly,  there  will  be 
the  feeling  that  is  natural  towards  those  who  wish  to 
reap  where  they  have  not  sown ;  and  the  gentry  will 
need  to  make  allowance  for  this.  If  they  set  out  with 
the  notion,  as  some  did  when  Local  Government  was 
established,  that  places  are  theirs  by  right  when  they 
condescend  to  take  them — that  they  are  entitled  to 
election  because  they  have  more  money,  more  educa- 
tion, because,  if  you  will,  they  are,  in  the  eye  of  pure 
reason,  better  qualified — nothing  but  trouble  can  come 
of  such  a  disposition.     Ireland,  which  in  George  Henry 


96       IRISH  BOOKS  AND  IRISH  PEOPLE 

Moore's  time  was  the  most  aristocratically  governe<l 
part  of  the  British  Isles,  is  now  by  far  more  democratic, 
at  all  events,  than  England  :  the  poor  man  is  on  a  level 
with  the  rich,  and  means  to  stay  there.  Those  who 
want  to  go  into  Irish  politics,  under  Home  Rule  £is 
now,  must  take  their  chances  in  the  ruck ;  but  if  they 
do,  they  will  find  a  people  ready  and  even  eager  to 
recognise  their  qualities,  and  to  allot  perhaps  more 
consideration  than  is  due  to  their  social  position. 

With  all  their  practical  democracy,  the  Irish  have  a 
great  tenderness  for  **  the  old  stock.**  In  the  cases 
(and  there  are  many  hundreds  of  them)  where  a  land- 
lord or  professional  man  or  Protestant  clergyman  has 
been  for  long  years  a  real  friend  and  support  and  coun- 
sellor to  his  poorer  neighbours,  as  Irish  in  voice  and 
looks  and  gesture  as  they,  sharing  their  tastes  and 
their  aversions,  their  sport  and  their  sorrow,  yet 
divided  and  cut  off  from  them  by  a  kind  of  political 
religion,  I  believe  from  my  heart  that  there  will  be  on 
both  sides  a  willingness  to  celebrate  the  end  of  that 
old  discord  in  some  happy  compact.  But  on  both 
sides  there  must  be  generosity  and  a  sympathy  with 
natural  hesitations  and  reluctances.  Whatever  comes 
or  goes,  the  old  domination  of  the  gentry  has  disap- 
peared; yet,  whatever  comes  or  goes,  men  of  that 
class  may  find  a  sphere  of  usefulness  and  even  of 
power  in  Ireland.  But  this  will  be  infinitely  easier  to 
achieve  when  the  great  subject  of  contention  is 
removed,  and  when  the  ex-landlord  can  seek  election, 
EUid  the  ex-tenant  can  support  him,  without  a  sense  on 
either  side  of  turning  against  the  traditional  loyalties 
of  a  class. 

1913. 


YESTERDAY  IN  IRELAND. 

|H,  maybe  it  was  yesterday,  or  forty  years 
ago,"  says  the  verse  of  an  Irish  song. 
That  is  the  kind  of  indeterminate  *  *  yes- 
terday "  which  is  described  in  Irish 
Memories  by  two  friends  who  have  made 
some  memories  of  Ireland  imperishable.  **  The  Ire- 
land that  Martin  and  I  knew  when  we  were  children," 
writes  Miss  Somerville,  **  is  fast  leaving  us;  every 
day  some  landmark  is  wiped  out."  No  one  knows 
better  than  she  that  while  in  many  parts  of  Ireland  you 
must  go  back  very  close  on  forty  years  to  reach  any 
likeness  of  that  old  way  of  life,  yet  in  other  parts  yes- 
terday and  forty  years  ago  are  very  much  the  same. 
Still,  she  would  reply,  and  I  must  admit,  that  one 
profound  modification  has  affected  even  the  most 
unchanging  places,  altering  the  whole  position  of  the 
class  in  which  she  was  born  and  bred.  In  a  sense,  all 
her  memories  of  Ireland  concern  themselves  with 
this  change,  depicting  either  what  formerly  was,  and 
the  process  of  its  passing,  or  what  yet  remains  and 
seems  likely  to  vanish  too.  Her  presentment  of  yes- 
terday is  well  worth  study,  for  its  outlook  is  typical  of 
the  most  generous  and  shrewdest  minds  among  the 
Irish  gentry.  I  use  here  an  old-fashioned  word,  some- 
what decried,  but  it  is  the  only  one  that  expresses  my 
meaning. 

But  readers  will  know  that  this  is  not  only  a  book  of 
memories;  it  is,  if  not  a  memoir,  at  least  the  memo- 


98       IRISH  BOOKS  AND  IRISH  PEOPLE 

rial  of  a  singularly  brilliant  Irish  woman.  Miss  Somer- 
ville  had  planned  to  write  her  recollections,  as  she 
had  written  so  much  else,  in  collaboration  with  her 
cousin  and  comrade,  **  Martin  Ross  *' — Miss  Violet 
Martin,  of  Ross,  in  County  Gal  way.  It  did  not  so 
fall  out;  and  though  in  this  volume  one  is  aware  that 
the  narrator  is  often  (by  a  sort  of  sub-conscious  habit) 
speaking  out  of  two  minds,  from  a  dual  complex  of 
associations,  and  though  considerable  fragments  of 
Martin  Ross's  own  writing  give  a  justification  to  the 
joint  signature,  yet  one  of  the  two  comrades  is  joint 
author  now  only  in  so  far  cts  she  is  part  of  all  the 
memories,  and  a  surviving  influence  little  likely  to  pass 
away.  But  her  stock,  so  to  say,  in  the  partnership 
remains;  Galway,  no  less  than  Cork,  is  the  field  over 
which  these  memories  travel.  In  the  main,  the  book 
is  concerned  with  recalling  the  joint  kindred  of  the 
two  friends  and  cousins,  and  reconstituting  the  sur- 
roundings and  the  atmosphere  of  both  families. 
Families,  however,  are  conceived  and  depicted  in 
their  most  extended  relations;  figures  are  evoked  of 
chief,  vassal,  page  and  groom,  tenant  and  master; 
and  with  them  go  their  *  *  opposite  numbers  * '  (to  bor- 
row an  army  term)  from  chief tainess  to  cook.  Chief- 
tainesses  are  there  unmistakably.  One  ex-beauty  had 
retired  from  the  Court  of  the  Regent  to  Castle  Towns- 
hend  (Miss  Somerville's  personal  background),  and 
there  lived  long,  **  noted  for  her  charm  of  manner,  her 
culture  and  her  sense  of  humour.*' 

Near  the  end  of  her  long  life  she  went  to  the  funeral  of  a  rela- 
tive, leaning  decorously  upon  the  arm  of  a  kinsman.  At  the 
churchyard  a  countryman  pushed  forward  between  her  and  the 
coifm.  She  thereupon  disengaged  her  arm  from  that  of  her  squire 
and  struck   the  countryman  in  tha  face. 


YESTERDAY  IN  IRELAND  99 

Miss  Somerville  observes  that  such  stories  may  help 
to  explain  the  French  Revolution;  but  she  adds,  quite 
plausibly  : — 

It  is  no  less  characteristic  of  the  time  that  the  countryman's 
attitude  does  not  come  into  the  story,  but  it  seems  to  me  probable 
that  he  went  home  and  boasted  then,  and  for  the  rest  of  his  life, 
that  old  Madam  had  "bet  him  in  a  blow  in  the  face." 

Undoubtedly  the  chieftain-spirit  is  admired,  and  not 
least  when  it  shows  itself  in  a  woman.  A  more 
lenient  and  more  modern  example  is  to  be  found  in 
the  account  of  a  dispute  about  bounds  in  a  transaction 
under  the  Land  Purchase  Act.  After  all  other 
agencies  failed,  the  landlord's  sister  called  the  dispu- 
tants before  her  to  the  disputed  spot,  stepped  the  dis- 
tance of  the  land  debatable,  drove  her  walking-stick 
into  a  crevice  of  the  rock  (disputes  are  passionate  in 
opposite  ratio  to  the  value  of  the  land)  and,  collecting 
stones,  built  a  small  cairn  round  it.  **  Now  men, 
she  said,  **  in  the  name  of  God  let  this  be  the  bounds." 
And  i:  was  so.  **  It  failed  the  agent,  and  it  failed  the 
landlord,  and  it  failed  the  priest;  but  Lady  Mary 
setded  it,'*  was  the  summing  up  of  one  of  the  dis- 
putants.    That  was  a  chief tainess  for  you. 

Not  inferior  in  chieftainly  spirit  was  Martin  Ross's 
grandfather  who  "  had  the  family  liking  for  a  horse." 

It  is  recorded  that  in  a  dealer's  yard  in  Dublin  he  mounted  a 
refractory  animal,  in  his  frock-coat  and  tall  hat,  and  took  him 
round  St.  Stephen's  Green  at  a  gallop,  through  the  traffic,  laymg 
into  him  with  his  umbrella. 

Somehow  that  picture  gives  a  measure  of  the  remote- 
ness. Stephen's  Green  was  not  then  a  place  of  square- 
set  granite  pavement,  tram-rails  and  large  swift-mov- 
ing, electric  trams;  it  was  a  leisurely  promenade  where 


100      IRISH  BOOKS  AND  IRISH  PEOPLE 

large  slow-moying  country  gentlemen  turned  out  in 
tall  hats  and  frock-coats.  We  of  Miss  Somerville's 
generation  depend  on  our  imagination,  not  on  memory, 
to  reconstruct  the  scene.  The  grandfather  in  ques- 
tion died  before  the  great  famine  of  1847,  which  shook 
and  in  many  places  uprooted  the  old  order  without  yet 
bringing  in  the  new.  His  son,  Martin  Ross's  father, 
had  the  famine  to  cope  with  and  survived  it;  but  of 
the  second  convulsion  from  which  emerged  the  Irelcuid 
of  to-day  he  saw  only  the  beginning,  for  he  died  in 
1873,  when  the  organised  peasant  uprising  was  at 
most  a  menace.  But  his  wife  knew  both  periods — the 
bad  times  of  the  late  'forties  and  the  bad  times  of  the 
early  eighties.  The  true  link  with  the  past  for  the 
writers  of  Irish  Memories  is  through  the  female  line. 
This  is  a  book  of  mothers  and  daughters  rather  than 
of  fathers  and  sons. 

Martin  Ross's  mother  went  back  easily  in  memory 
to  the  society  which  had  known  the  Irish  Parliament, 
had  made  or  accepted  the  Union,  and  which,  after 
the  Union,  exercised  chieftainship  in  Ireland.  She 
was  the  daughter  of  Chief  Justice  Bushe,  one  of 
Grattan's  rivals  in  oratory,  who,  like  Grattan,  had 
opposed  the  Union  with  all  the  resources  of  his 
eloquence.  Against  his  name  in  the  private  Castle 
list  of  voters  for  the  crucial  division  had  been  written 
in  despair  one  word  :  **  Incorruptible.**  He  was  the 
common  ancestor  whose  blood  made  the  bond  of  kin- 
ship between  Miss  Somerville  and  Martin  Ross,  and 
both  these  staunch  Unionist  ladies  are  passionately 
proud  of  the  part  which  their  grandfather  played  in 
resisting  the  Union ;  just  as  you  will  find  the  staunchest 
Ulster  Covenanters  exulting  in  the  fact  that  they  had 


YESTERDAY    IN    IRELAND  101 

a  forbear  **  out  "  with  the  United  Irishmen  at  Antrim 
or  Ballynahinch  in  1798.  No  wonder  Enghshmen 
find  Ireland  puzzhng;  but  Scots  understand,  for  their 
own  records  abound  in  examples  of  the  same  para- 
doxes of  historic  sentiment. 

Yesterday  in  Ireland,  I  think,  for  my  present  pur- 
pose comes  to  define  itself  as  the  period  between  the 
famine  of  1847  and  the  famine  of  1879 — between  the 
downfall  of  O'Connell  and  Parnell's  coming  to  power. 
We  who  were  born  in  the  'sixties  grew  up  in  the  close 
of  it,  and  perhaps  recognise  now  more  clearly  than 
when  they  were  with  us  the  characters  of  our  kindred 
who  were  a  part  of  it  as  mature  human  beings.  **  The 
men  and  women,  but  more  specially  the  women  of 
my  mother's  family  and  generation,  are  a  lost  pattern, 
a  vanished  type."  I  could  say  the  same  as  Miss 
Somerville.  There  was  a  spaciousness  about  those 
people,  a  disregard  of  forms  cmd  conventions,  a  habit 
of  thinking  and  acting  for  themselves  which  really 
came  down  from  a  long  tradition  of  interpreting  the 
law  to  their  own  liking.  Miss  Somerville  and  her 
comrade  knew  the  type  in  its  fullest  development,  for 
both  grew  up  in  far-out  Atlantic-bordering  regions — 
Carbery  of  West  Cork,  Connemara  of  West  Galway — 
where  the  countryside  knew  scarcely  **  any  inhabitants 
but  the  gentry  and  their  dependents.  *  Where'd  we 
be  at  all  if  it  wasn't  for  the  Colonel's  Big  Lady?'  said 
the  hungry  country- wom.en,  in  the  Bad  Times,  scurry- 
ing, barefooted,  to  her  in  any  emergency  to  be  fed 
and  doctored  and  scolded."  So  writes  Miss  Somer- 
ville of  her  mother ;  so  might  Martin  Ross  have  written 
of  her  father,  who  was,  so  far  as  in  him  lay,  a  Provi- 
dence for  his  tenantry.     Yet  there  is  a  story  told  of 


102      IRISH  BOOKS  AND  IRISH  PEOPLE 

Mr.  Martin  that  throws  a  flood  of  light  on  the  whole 
position  of  affairs.  Who  were  indeed  the  dependents? 
And  on  what  did  they  depend?  The  story  tells  of  a 
widow  down  by  Lough  Corrib,  long  in  arrears  with 
her  rent. 

The  Master  sent  to  her  two  or  three  times,  and  in  the  end  he 
walked  down  himself,  after  his  breakfast,  and  he  took  Thady  (the 
steward)  with  him.  Well,  when  he  went  into  the  house,  she  was 
so  proud  to  see  him,  and  "  Your  Honour  is  welcome,"  says  she, 
and  she  put  a  chair  for  him.  He  didn't  sit  down  at  all,  but  he 
was  standing  up  there  with  his  back  to  the  dresser,  and  the  children 
were  sitting  down  one  side  the  fire.  The  tears  came  from  the 
Master's  eyes,  Thady  seen  them  fall  down  the  cheek.  "  Say  no 
more  about  the  rent,"  says  the  Master  to  her,  "  you  need  say  no 
more  about  it  till  I  come  to  you  again."  Well,  it  was  the  next 
winter,  men  were  working  in  Gurthnamuckla  and  Thady  with 
them,  and  the  Master  came  to  the  wall  of  the  field,  and  a  letter  in 
his  hand,  and  he  called  Thady  over  to  him.  What  had  he  to  show 
but  the  widow's  rent  that  her  brother  in  America  sent  her, 

Martin  Ross,  writing  in  the  light  of  to-day,  makes 
this  comment : — 

It  will  not  happen  again ;  it  belongs  to  an  almost  forgotten 
regime,  that  was  capable  of  abuse,  yet  capable  too  of  summoning 
forth  the  best  impulses  of  Irish  hearts. 

War,  famine  and  pestilence — all  these  are  capable 
of  summoning  forth  splendid  impulses:  but  society 
should  not  be  orgcinised  to  give  play  to  these  hazards 
of  feeling.  The  fundamental  truth  about  yesterday 
in  Ireland  is  that  everybody  accepted  as  natural  a 
state  of  affairs  under  which  Irish  gentry  were  taking 
rents  that  could  not  be  earned  on  the  land  which  was 
burdened  with  them.  Landlord  and  tenant  alike  were 
really  dependent  on  what  was  sent  back  by  the  sons 
and  daughters  of  poor  people  from  America  to  prevent 
the  break-up  of  homes.       The  whole  situation  was 


YESTERDAY    IN    IRELAND  103 

false,  from  top  to  bobtom.  At  top,  a  small  class, 
physically  and  often  mentally  superb,  full  of  charm, 
extraordinarily  agreeable,  fit  for  great  uses,  but  by 
temperament,  habit  and  education  unequipped  for  its 
proper  task  of  equipping  and  directing  the  labour  out 
of  which  ultimately  it  had  to  live  or  perish.  It 
perished.  At  bottom,  a  multitude  with  marvellous 
constitution,  undermined  by  age-long  under-feeding, 
friendly,  most  lovable,  most  winning,  but  untrained 
and  unequipped,  half-hearted  in  its  business  of  rolling 
the  pitiless  stone  up  the  never-ending  hill.  It  survived 
— clinging  with  a  desperate  tenacity  to  the  soil  which 
so  meagrely  nourished  it.  But  during  that  generation 
of  yesterday — and  how  many  generations  before  it? — 
there  grew  up  inevitably,  from  the  conditions,  a  tradi- 
tional toleration  of  incompetence,  a  faith  as  it  were  in 
inefficiency.  Ireland  of  yesterday  was  bound  up  in 
one  vicious  circle  of  work  that  was  necessarily  under- 
paid because  it  was  inefficient,  and  work  that  was 
necessarily  inefficient  because  it  was  underpaid.  In 
the  lower  class  there  were  no  reserves ;  the  dependants 
lived  from  hand  to  mouth,  and  when  hand  failed  to 
find  food,  they  had  to  come  to  the  upper  class,  first 
for  remission  of  its  claims  on  th^m  and  then  for  actual 
subsistence.  But  the  dependence  was  mutual,  and 
there  were  no  reserves  at  top  equal  to  the  needs  of 
that  joint  hazard.  Penury  was  only  at  two  removes 
from  the  **gentry  houses.'*  While  the  first  line  of 
defence,  the  tenants,  held  good,  the  world  went  plea- 
santly for  the  Ireland  of  yesterday.  But  when  that 
line  brojce,  and  starvation  burst  in,  then  the  best  men 
and  women  in  the  big  houses  flung  their  all  into  the 
common  stock,  and  went  under — as  did  the  chief  of 
the  Martins  in  Connemara. 


104      IRISH  BOOKS  AND  IRISH  PEOPLE 

That,  however,  happened  the  day  before 
yesterday;  yesterday  saw  nothing  so  dire.  But 
the  menace  of  it  was  always  there,  and  the 
rest  of  Ireland  gradually  consolidated  itself  for  a 
struggle  to  win  what  had  long  ago  been  acquired  for 
Protestant  Ulster — ^the  right  of  a  tenant  to  what  his 
own  labour  created.  The  Ulster  custom  has  done  for 
Ulster,  mdustrial  as  well  as  agricultural,  more  than  is 
generally  perceived.  It  gave  in  some  degree  recogni- 
tion to  efficiency.  Tenure  was  there  less  precarious, 
less  dependent  on  the  landlord's  pleasure;  men  were 
freer,  work  had  more  rights.  There  was  less  room  for 
impulse,  perhaps  less  appeal  to  affection;  but  when  a 
business  relation  is  based  on  impulse  and  affection, 
where  rights  are  not  solid  and  defined,  the  sense  of 
obligation  easily  leads  men  astray.  That  which  is 
given  out  of  loyalty  and  affection  comes  to  be  taken 
as  a  due.  Martin  Ross — **  Miss  Violet,"  whom  the 
people  of  Ross  called  **  the  gentle  lady,"  as  beautiful 
a  name  as  was  ever  earned  by  mortal — inherited  with 
little  qualification  the  landlord  standpoint.  She  recalls 
the  story  of  an  election  in  1872,  when  her  father,  going 
to  vote  in  Oughterard,  saw  **  a  company  of  infantry 
keeping  the  way  for  Mr.  Arthur  Guinness  (afterwards 
Lord  Ardilaun)  as  he  conveyed  to  the  poll  a  handful 
of  his  tenants  to  vote  for  Captain  Trench,  he  himself 
walking  in  front  with  the  oldest  of  them  on  his  arm." 
She  does  not  ask  if  the  tenants  desired  to  be  so  con- 
veyed. She  merely  describes  how  her  father  **  ranged 
through  the  crowd  incredulously,  asking  for  this  or 
that  tenant,  unable  to  believe  that  they  had  deserted 
him."  When  he  came  home,  "  even  the  youngest 
child  of  the  house  could  see  how  great  had  been  the 


YESTERDAY    IN    IRELAND  105 

blow.  It  was  not  the  political  defeat,  severe  as  that 
was,  it  was  the  personal  wound,  and  it  was  incur- 
able.'* 

Looking  back  through  all  those  years,  the  **  gentle 
lady  '*  can  see  nothing  in  that  episode  but  a  case  of 
priestly  inftimidation.  **  One  tneed  not  blame  the 
sheep  who  passed  in  a  frightened  huddle  from  one 
fold  to  another."  Yet  friends  of  mine  in  Galway  look 
back  on  it  in  a  very  different  spirit;  they  remember 
the  Nolan-Trench  election  and  Captain  Nolan's  vic- 
tory as  a  triumph  of  the  poor,  a  first  instalment  of 
freedom ;  it  brought  with  it  an  exultation  very  different 
from  the  mere  outburst  of  hatred  that  these  pages 
suggest.  What  is  more,  having  been  privileged  to  sit 
in  the  most  widely  representative  assembly  of  Irish- 
men that  modem  Ireland  has  known,  I  can  testify  that 
to-day  peer  and  peasant,  clergy  and  laymen,  those 
who  opposed  it,  and  those  others  who  fought  for  it, 
alike  admit  that  the  change  which  such  a  victory  fore- 
shadowed was  necessary  and  was  beneficent.  But  it 
was  a  revolution.  Ireland  of  yesterday  was  Ireland 
before  the  revolution.  The  Ireland  that  Miss  Somer- 
ville  and  Martin  Ross  have  lived  in  as  grown  women 
hcis  been  a  country  in  the  throes  of  a  revolution,  long 
drawn-out,  with  varying  phases,  yet  still  incomplete. 
Those  who  judge  Ireland  should  remember  this.  In 
time  of  revolution,  life  is  difficult,  ancient  loyalties 
clash  with  new  yet  living  principles,  sympathy  and 
justice  even  are  unsure  guides.  No  country  could  have 
been  kept  for  forty  years  in  such  a  ferment  as  Ireland 
has  known  without  profound  demoralisation.  We 
may  well  envy  those  who  lived  more  easily  and 
quietly  in  the  Ireland  of  yesterday,  and  held  with  an 

H 


106      IRISH  BOOKS  AND  IRISH  PEOPLE 

unquestioning  spirit  to  the  state   of   things  in   which 
they  were  born. 

Such  were  the  folk  of  whom  Miss  Somerville  writes 
with  **  that  indomitable  family  pride  that  is  an  asset 
of  immense  value  in  the  history  of  a  country.*'  They 
**  took  all  things  in  their  stride  without  introspection 
or  hesitation.  Their  unflinching  conscientiousness, 
their  violent  church-going  (I  speak  of  the  sisters),  were 
accompanied  by  a  whole-souled  love  of  a  spree  and  a 
wonderful  gift  for  a  row.*'  I  can  corroborate  her 
details,  especially  the  last.  All  those  that  I  recall  had 
some  talent  for  feuds;  at  least,  in  every  family  there 
would  be  one  warrior,  male  or  female;  eind  all  had 
the  complete  contempt,  not  so  much  for  convention 
as  for  those  who  were  affected  in  their  lives  (or  cos- 
tumes) by  any  standard  that  was  not  home-made.  But 
in  all  humility  I  must  admit  that  the  real  heroines  of 
this  book — Mrs.  Somerville  and  Mrs.  Martin — outshine 
anything  that  my  memory  can  produce.  When 
Martin  Ross  and  her  mother  went  back  to  West  Gal- 
way  sund  re-established  themselves  at  their  old  home, 
a  letter  from  her  to  Miss  Somerville  describes  one 
incident : — 

I  wish  you  had  seen  Paddy  Griffy,  a  ver>'  active  little  old  man, 
and  a  beloved  of  mine,  when  he  came  down  on  Sunday  night  to 
welcome  me.  After  the  usual  hand-kissings  on  the  steps,  he  put 
his  hands  over  his  head  and  stood  in  the  doorway,  I  suppose  invok- 
ing his  saint.      He  then  rushed  into  the  hall. 

"  Dance,  Paddy,"  screamed  Nurse  Bennett  (my  foster-mother, 
now  our  maid-of-all-work). 

And  he  did  dance,  and  awfully  well,  too,  to  his  own  singing. 
Mamma,  who  was  attired  in  a  flowing  pink  dressing-gown  and  a 
black  hat  trimmed  with  lilac,  became  suddenly  emulous,  and  with 
her  spade  under  her  arm  joined  in  the  jig.  This  lasted  for  about 
a  minute,  and  was  a  never-to-be. forgotten  sight.  They  skipped 
round  the  hall,  they  changed  sides,  they  swept  up  to  each  other  and 
back  again  and  finished  with  the  deepest  curtseys. 


YESTERDAY    IN    IRELAND  107 

My  own  mother  would  gladly  have  done  the  same 
on  a  like  occasion,  but  she  lacked  Mrs.  Martin's 
talent  for  the  jig.  Mrs.  Somerville  is  sketched  with  a 
free  and  humorous  hand.  I  quote  only  one  detail, 
but  it  shows  the  real  Irishwoman,  more  deeply  in 
touch  with  Ireland's  traditional  life  than  any  Gaelic 
League  could  bring  her.  Question  arose  how  to  find 
a  suitable  offering  for  *  an  old  servant  of  forty  years' 
standing,  whose  fancies  were  few  and  her  needs 
none.'  **  Give  her  a  nice  shroud,"  said  Mrs.  Somer- 
ville, **  there's  nothing  in  the  world  she'd  like  so  well 
as  that." 

Shakespeare  could  not  have  outdone  that  intuition, 
and  only  one  of  the  larger  breed  would  have  been 
unconventional  enough  to  suggest  what  the  younger 
generation,  hampered  by  other  feelings  than  those  of 
West  Carbery,  "  were  too  feeble  to  accept." 

These  two  traits  belong  to  the  harmonious  and 
thoroughly  Irish  grouping  in  which  such  ladies  as  Mrs. 
Martin  and  Mrs.  Somerville  were  central  figures  of  the 
whole  countryside.  That  grouping  exists  no  longer, 
and  this  book  has  to  describe  the  discord  which  inter- 
rupted that  harmony.  Martin  Ross's  elder  brother, 
Robert  Martin  (famous  in  his  day  as  the  writer  and 
singer  of  Ballyhooly,  and  a  score  of  other  topical 
songs),  left  his  work  as  a  London  journalist  to  help  in 
fighting  the  first  campaign  which  brought  the  word 
**  boycott  "  into  usage. 

It  was  at  this  work  (his  sister  writes),  that  Robert  knew  for  the 
first  time  what  it  was  to  have  every  man's  hand  against  hirn,  to 
meet  the  stare  of  hatred,  the  jeer  and.  the  sidelong  curse  ;  to  face 
endless  drives  on  outside  cars  with  his  revolver  in  his  hand ;  to 
plan  the  uphill  tussle  with  boycotted  crops  and  cattle  for  which  a 
market  could  scarcely  be  found  :  to  know  the  imminence  of  death, 


108      IRISH  BOOKS  AND  IRISH  PEOPLE 

when  by  accidentally  choosing  one  of  two  roads  he  evaded  the  man 
with  a  gun  who  had  gone  out  to  wait  for  him. 

Robert  Martin  faced,  in  a  word,  the  earliest  eind 
ugliest  phases  of  that  Irish  revolution,  which  was  the 
Nemesis  of  the  all  too  easy  and  too  pleasant  ways  of 
yesterday  in  Ireland.  Later,  after  his  death,  Martin 
Ross  herself  had  to  gain  some  experience  of  the  same 
trouble.  When  she  went  back  with  her  mother  to 
re-establish  the  family  home  from  which  they  had 
been  fifteen  years  absent,  there  was  a  hostile  element 
in  the  parish,  and  gracious  hospitality  was  ungra- 
ciously met.  An  attempt  was  made  to  keep  children 
from  a  children's  party  which  she  had  organised.  The 
move  was  half-hearted  and  her  energy  defeated  it,  but 
that  the  attempt  should  be  made  was  such  **  a  facer  *' 
as  she  had  never  before  known.  Like  many  another 
ugly  thing  in  Ireland,  it  originated  in  that  cowardly 
fear  of  public  opinion  which  is  to  be  found  on  the 
seamy  side  of  all  revolutions;  and  it  did  not  stand 
against  her  **  gallant  fight  to  restore  the  old  ways,  the 
old  friendships.** 

The  old  ways,  in  so  far  as  they  meant  the  old 
friendships,  she  might  hope  to  restore,  although  the 
friendship  would,  half  consciously,  take  on  a  new 
accent;  personality  would  count  for  more  in  it,  posi- 
tion for  less.  But  the  old  relation  which  authorised 
a  kind-hearted  landlord  to  feel  that  his  tenants  had 
**  deserted  him  **  because  they  voted  against  his  wish 
in  an  election — that  is  gone  for  ever;  and  gone,  at  all 
events,  for  the  present,  is  the  local  leadership  of  the 
gentry. 

I  question  whether  it  is  realised  that  in  parting  from 
Jiat  leadership  Irelcind  lost  what  was  in  a  sense  Home 


YESTERDAY    IN    IRELAND  109 

Rule.  In  the  **  yesterday  '*  of  which  I  write  Ireland 
was  governed  in  all  its  parochial  cind  most  intimate 
affairs  by  a  class  or  a  caste;  but  that  governing  class 
was  Irish — Irish  with  a  limitation,  no  doubt,  yet  still 
indisputably  Irish.  When  that  rule  perished,  when 
that  class  lost  its  local  ascendancy,  government 
became  the  bastard  compromise  that  we  have  known, 
with  power  inharmoniously  divided  between  official- 
dom and  agitators.  The  law  was  framed  and  admini- 
stered by  officials,  often  English  or  Scotch,  possessing 
no  authority  except  what  the  law  conferred  on  them. 
Authority  lay  very  largely  v^ith  popular  leaders;  but 
leadership  and  authority  alike  were  purely  personal, 
depending  on  a  man's  own  qualities  and  the  support 
which  they  evoked.  No  man  was  born  to  it  as  of 
right,  and  such  authority  is  far  more  precarious  than 
the  established  power  of  a  governing  class.  This  is 
a  weakness  in  all  democratically-governed  countries, 
but  where  there  is  self-government,  the  individual,  in 
entering  upon  office,  acquires  the  support  and  the 
prestige  of  a  long-established  machinery  of  power. 
He  ceases  to  be  merely  the  individual  when  he 
becomes  part  of  the  Government.  For  the  Irish 
leaders  this  reinforcement  to  the  personal  authority 
has  never  existed;  they  have  been  at  a  terrible  dis- 
advantage as  compared  with  all  other  democratic  poli- 
ticians; and  consequently  the  power  exercised  by 
them  has  always,  except  perhaps  at  ParnelFs  zenith, 
been  far  less  than  was  the  combined  authority  of  the 
gentry  before  the  landlord  rule  was  broken.  Those 
who  shared  in  that  authority  acted,  and  could  afford 
to  act,  with  unquestioning  confidence;  they  were  surer 
of  themselves,  than  is  any  popular  leader  or  any  offi- 


no      IRISH  BOOKS  AND  IRISH  PEOPLE 

cial  in  Ireland  of  to-day.  It  seldom  occurred  to  them 
to  ask  whether  their  conduct  in  cUiy  juncture  might 
meet  with  approval;  being  a  law  to  other  people,  they 
were  naturally  a  law  to  themselves,  and  an  Irish  law. 
Their  power  was  excessive,  and  demoralised  them  by 
its  lack  of  limitation;  yet  many  of  the  qualities  which 
it  bred,  made  them  an  element  of  great  value  in  the 
country.  These  qualities  are  by  no  means  extinct  in 
their  kindred,  nor  is  the  tradition  of  their  right  to 
leadership  forgotten. 

Of  one  thing  Miss  Somerville  and  those  for  whom 
she  speaks  (she  is  a  real  spokeswoman)  may  be  well 
assured.  Whatever  be  the  surface  mood  of  the 
moment,  whatever  the  passing  effect  of  war's  hectic 
atmosphere,  nothing  is  more  deeply  realised  through- 
out Ireland  than  the  need  to  restore  the  old  ways,  the 
old  friendships — the  need  to  bring  back  the  gentry  to 
their  old  uses  in  Ireland,  and  to  so  much  of  leadership 
as  should  be  theirs  by  right  of  fitness.  When  the  his- 
tory of  the  Irish  Convention  comes  to  be  fully  recorded, 
it  will  be  seen  that  a  great  desire  was  universally  felt, 
cordially  uttered,  in  that  assembly,  to  bridge  over  the 
gulf  which  divides  us  from  yesterday  in  Ireland,  and 
to  recover  for  the  future  much  of  what  Wcis  admirable, 
valuable  and  lovable  in  a  past  that  is  not  unkindly 
remembered.  Indeed,  it  is  plain  that  Miss  Somer- 
ville has  felt  the  influences  that  were  abroad  on  the 
winds,  when  she  wrote  of  her  comrade  : — 

Her  love  of  Ireland,  combined  with  her  distrust  of  some  of  those 
newer  influences  in  Irish  affairs  to  which  her  letters  refer,  made 
her  dread  any  weakening  of  the  links  that  bind  the  United  King- 
dom into  one  ;  but  I  believe  that  if  she  were  here  now,  and  saw 
the  changes  that  the  past  eighteen  months  have  brought  to  Ire- 
land,  she  would  be  quick   to   welcome  the   hope   that   Irish  politics 


YESTERDAY    IN    IRELAND  111 

are  lifting  at  last  out  of  the  controversial  rut  of  centuries,  and  that 
although  it  has  been  said  of  East  and  West  that  "  never  the  two 
shall  meet,"  North  and  South  will  yet  prove  that  in  Ireland  it  is 
always  the  impossible  that  happens. 

North  and  South — that  is  a  more  difficult  gulf  to 
bridge,  for  the  one  I  have  been  speaking  of  is  only  a 
breach  to  repair.  But  industrial  Protestant  Ulster  and 
the  rest  of  Ireland  have  never  really  been  one.  Unity 
there  has  not  to  be  re-established,  but  created.  Martin 
Ross  went  to  the  North  only  once  **  at  the  tremendous 
moment  of  the  signing  of  the  Ulster  Covenant,"  and 
she  v^as  profoundly  impressed  by  what  she  saw.  She 
wrote  about  it  publicly  and  she  wrote  also  privately 
(in  a  letter  which  I  had  the  honour  to  receive)  a  pas- 
sage well  worth  quoting  : — 

I  did  not  know  the  North  at  all.  What  surprised  me  about  the 
place  was  the  feeling  of  cleverness  and  go,  and  also  the  people 
struck  me  as  being  hearty.  If  only  the  South  would  go  up  North 
and  see  what  they  are  doing  there,  and  how  they  are  doing  it,  and 
ask  them  to  show  them  how,  it  would  make  a  good  deal  of  differ- 
ence. And  then  the  North  should  come  South  and  see  what  nice 
people  we  are,  and  how  we  do  that. 

When  that  reciprocal  pilgrimage  was  accomplished 
by  the  Convention,  her  anticipations  were  more  them 
justified.  But  how  clever  she  was  !  In  a  flash,  she, 
coming  there  a  stranger,  hits  on  the  word  w^hich 
describes  Ulster  and  differentiates  it  from  the  rest  of 
Ireland,  **  Hearty,"  that  is  what  they  are;  it  is  the 
good  side  of  their  self -content.  No  people  that  is  in 
revolution  can  be  hearty — least  of  all  when  revolution 
has  dragged  on  through  more  than  a  generation.  Dis- 
trust of  your  comrades — distrust  of  your  leaders — self- 
distrust — these  are  the  characteristic  vices  of  revolu- 
tion (look  at  Russia),  and  they  sow  a  bitter  seed.    Pro- 


112      IRISH  BOOKS  AND  IRISH  PEOPLE 

testant  Ulster  has  never  known  revolution;  for  it  yes- 
terday and  to-day  have  been  happily,  naturally,  con- 
tinuous. Political  change  it  has  known,  normal  and 
beneficent ;  land  purchase  came  to  Ulster  as  a  by-pro- 
duct of  what  the  rest  of  Ireland  endured  in  torment, 
and  agony,  and  self -mutilation.  Clever  the  Northerns 
are,  but  their  cleverness  issues  prosperously  in  action ; 
they  carry  on  in  a  solidly  "established  order;  they  have 
not  needed  to  break  down  before  they  could  begin  to 
build.  That  is  why  their  heartiness  stood  out  when 
they  were  assembled,  as  I  have  seen  them  in  a  common 
council  of  Irishmen,  which  was  also,  thank  heaven, 
a  companionship.  But  the  world  at  large  can  see  it 
exhibited  in  another  way.  Contrast  the  work  of  the 
Ulster  Players  with  that  of  the  Abbey  Theatre.  The 
Drone  is  perhaps  not  the  best  of  new  Irish  comedies, 
but  it  is  infinitely  the  pleasantest;  there  is  no  bitter 
tang  in  its  hearty  humour.  Even  in  The  Enthusiast, 
a  sketch  which  has  some  touch  of  pessimism,  there  is 
little  more  than  a  good-humoured  shrug  of  the 
shoulders  when  the  Enthusiast  abandons  his  preten- 
sions to  make  himself  heard  against  the  banging  of 
Orange  drums.  I  find  a  very  different  note,  not 
merely  in  the  work  of  Synge,  of  Boyle,  Colum,  Len- 
nox Robinson,  and  the  rest  of  the  Abbey  dramatists, 
but  even  in  the  books  of  which  Miss  Somerville  was 
joint  author.  When  Ireland  is  seen  with  the  eyes,  for 
instance,  of  her  Major  Yeates,  is  not  the  whole  atti- 
tude one  of  amused  and  acquiescent  resignation  ?  Take 
the  hunting  out  of  it  (with  all  the  humours  of  the 
hunt) — take  the  shooting  and  fishing — and  what  is  left 
but  a  life  (to  borrow  a  phrase  from  Mr.  George  Moore) 
**  as   melancholy    as   bog-water  and   as   ineffectual." 


YESTERDAY    IN    IRELAND  113 

Miss  Somerville  would  probably  decline  to  imagine  an 
Irelemd  with  these  unthinkable  suppressions,  but  after 
all,  we  cannot  live  by  or  for  sport  alone.  What  gave 
dignity  and  reality  to  the  life  of  yesterday  was  leader- 
ship in  one  class,  eind  loyalty  in  the  other.  Leader- 
ship resting  on  ownership  is  gone  now,  dead  as  the 
dodo ;  what  is  left  for  the  like  (say)  of  Mr.  Flurry  Knox 
if  he  should  begin  to  take  himself  seriously?  You 
can  easily  make  a  soldier  of  him ;  we  have  all  met  him 
in  trenches  and  observed  his  air>'  attitude  in  No  Man's 
Land.  But  soldiering  has  generally  meant  expatria- 
tion. For  my  part,  I  hope  some  day  to  see  this  gentle- 
man (or  his  like)  play  a  useful  part  in  some  battalion  of 
Irish  territorials — some  home  service  offshoot  of  the 
Connaught  Rangers.  But  that  is  not  enough.  If 
those  who,  like  Miss  Somerville,  love  Ireland's  yester- 
day and  desire  to  link  it  up  with  a  worthy  to-morrow, 
there  must  be  a  wider  understanding  of  Ireland,  not 
in  the  North  only,  but  in  that  element  of  the  South 
and  West  which  stands  to-day  in  a  sense  morally 
expatriated.  The  Irish  gentry  who  complain  that 
their  tenants  **  deserted  "  them  must  leam  where  they 
themselves  failed  their  tenants.  Leadership  cannot 
depend  merely  on  a  power  to  evict,  and  they  would 
to-day  repudiate  the  desire  for  a  leadership  so 
grounded.  But  between  free  men  where  there  is  not 
comprehension  there  can  be  no  leadership. 

I  take  first  what  is  most  difFiCult — the  very  heart 
of  antagonism.  Everyone  who  desires  to  understand 
Ireland  to-day  should  read  Patrick  Pearse's  post- 
humous book,  called  boldly   The  Story  oj  a  Success 

1  "  The  Story  of  a  Success."  By  P.  H.  Pearse.  Being  a  Record 
of  St.  Erda's  College,  September,  1908,  to  Easter,  igi6.  Edited  by 
Desmond  Ryan,    B.A.     Maunsel   &  Co. 


114      IRISH  BOOKS  AND  IRISH  PEOPLE 

It  is  the  spiritual  history  of  Pearse's  career  as  a  school- 
master, edited  and  completed  by  his  pupil,  Desmond 
Ryan ;  and  it  is  a  book  by  which  no  one  can  be  justly 
off  ended—a  book  instinct  with  nobility,  chivalry  and 
high  courtesy,  free  from  all  touch  of  bitterness ;  a  book, 
too,  shot  through  and  slashed  with  that  tragic  irony 
which  the  Greeks  knew  to  be  the  finest  thrill  in  litera- 
ture— the  word  spoken,  to  which  the  foreknown  event 
gives  an  echo  of  double  meaning.  Pearse  was  con- 
cerned with  Ireland's  yesterday;  he  desired  to  bring 
the  present  and  the  future  into  organic  rotation  with 
the  past.  But  his  yesterday  was  not  Miss  Somerville's 
nor  mine.  The  son  of  an  English  mechanic  and  a 
Galway  woman,  he  was  brought  up  in  Connemara 
after  the  landlord  power  had  ceased  to  exist.  Ireland's 
past  for  him  and  Irish  tradition  were  seen  through  the 
medium  of  an  imagination  in  touch  only  with  the  pea- 
sant life,  but  inspired  by  books  and  literature,  written 
and  spoken.  His  yesterday  was  of  no  definite  past, 
for  he  had  been  bom  in  a  revolution  when  the  imme- 
diate past  was  obliterated.  In  his  vision  a  thousand 
years  were  no  more  than  the  watch  of  some  spell- 
bound chivalry,  waiting  for  the  voice  that  should  say, 
**  It  is  the  time."  Cuchulain  and  Robert  Emmet  were 
his  inspirations,  but  the  champion  of  the  legendary 
Red  Branch  cycle  and  the  young  revolutionary  of 
Napoleon's  days  were  near  to  him  one  as  the  other,  in 
equally  accessible  communion.  Going  back  easily  to 
the  heroic  legends,  on  which,  though  blurred  in  their 
outline,  his  boyhood  had  been  fostered  by  tellers  of 
long-transmitted  tales  at  a  Connemara  hearthside,  he 
found  the  essential  beauty  and  significance  where 
more  learned  thousrh  less  cultured  readers  have  been 


YESTERDAY    IN    IRELAND  115 

bewildered  by  what  seemed  to  them  wild  extrava- 
gances of  barbarism.  What  he  gathered  from  them 
did  not  lie  inert,  but  quickened  in  him  and  in  others, 
for  he  was  the  revolutionary  as  schoolmaster — ^^the 
most  drastic  revolutionary  of  all.  In  the  school  review 
which  v/as  the  first  vehicle  for  these  writings  of  his,  he 
hoped  to  found  *'  the  rallying  point  for  the  thought  and 
aspirations  of  all  those  who  would  bring  back  again 
in  Ireland  that  Heroic  Age  which  reserved  its  highest 
honour  for  the  hero  who  had  the  most  childlike  heart, 
for  the  king  who  had  the  largest  pity,  and  for  the  poet 
who  visioned  the  truest  image  of  beauty."  All  his 
theory  of  education  was  based  on  the  old  Irish  institu- 
tion of  fosterage,  which  was  no  mere  physical  tie  of 
the  breast ;  the  child  sent  to  be  fostered  was  sent  to  be 
bred  and  trained,  and  it  was  a  tie  stronger  than  that 
of  its  blood  or  of  the  breast.  Irish  Memories  shows 
incidentally  how  great  a  part  this  fosterage  played  in 
the  Ross  of  yesterday- — that  family  with  its  multitude 
of  children  was  bound  to  the  countryside  by  all  the 
**  Nursies.**  But  the  Martin  household,  cind  all  similar 
households  were,  in  a  less  literal  sense,  fostered  by 
the  peasantry  at  large.  The  truest  part  of  education 
should  be  to  know  your  own  country  (a  prin- 
ciple much  neglected  in  Ireland),  and  which  of  us  all, 
who  had  the  good  fortune  to  be  brought  up  in  touch 
with  Irish  peasant  life,  does  not  realise  our  debt?  We 
received  a  devotion,  an  affection,  for  which  no 
adequate  return  could  be  made — it  is  the  nature  of 
fosterage  that  the  fosterer  should  give  more  than  can 
ever  be  requited;  but  we  gained  also  our  real  know- 
ledge, in  so  far  as  we  ever  had  it,  of  the  countryside, 
the   traditional    wisdom,    the    inherited    way   of    life. 


116      IRISH  BOOKS  AND  IRISH  PEOPLE 

There  was  more  to  be  got  if  we  had  the  wit  to  assimi- 
late it.  Almost  all  of  modern  Irish  literature  that  has 
lasting  value  is  evoked  from  elements  floating  in 
peasant  memory,  in  the  peasant  mind,  and  in  the 
coloured  peasant  speech  of  ein  Ireland  which  keeps 
unbroken  descent  from  a  long  line  of  yesterdays.  Mr. 
Yeats  is  only  the  chief  of  those  who  draw  from  this 
source.  Miss  Somerville  herself  and  her  cousin  must 
have  known  well  that  the  real  worth  of  their  work  lies 
in  their  instinct  for  the  poetry  which,  more  specially 
in  Gaelic-speaking  regions,  sits  in  rags  by  roadside  and 
chimney  corner.  Irish  poetry  is  not  only  the  tragic 
voice  of  the  keene;  Gaelic  had  its  comic  muse  as  well, 
a  robust  virago,  of  the  breed  which  produced  Aristo- 
phanes and  Rabelais — and  Slipper  with  his  gift  for 
epic  narrative  is  a  camp-follower  of  that  regiment. 

Yet  in  Miss  Somerville*s  appreciation  there  is  often 
— not  always — a  sense  of  the  incongruity  as  well  as  of 
the  beauty  in  peasant  speech.  The  woman  crying  for 
alms  of  bread  who  described  her  place  of  habitation, 
**  I  do  be  like  a  wild  goose  over  on  the  side  of  Dro- 
minidy  Wood,*'  moves  to  laughter  as  well  as  to  pity 
with  the  dignity  of  her  phrase.  Ireland  so  felt  is  Ire- 
land perceived  from  the  outside — seen  as  a  picturesque 
ruin.  You  cannot  so  see  Pearse;  he  is  too  strong  for 
even  compassionate  laughter.  What  he  embodies  is 
the  central  strength  of  Irish  nationalism — its  disregard 
of  the  immediate  event. 

Wise  men  have  told  me  that  I  ought  never  to  set  my  foot  on  a 
path  unless  I  can  see  clearly  whither  it  will  lead  me.  But  that 
philosophy  would  condemn  most  of  us  to  stand  still  till  we  rot. 
Surely  one  can  do  no  more  than  assure  one's  self  that  each  step 
-one  takes  is  right ;  and  as  to  the  Tightness  of  a  step  one  is  fortu- 
nately answerable  only  to  one's  conscience  and  not  to  the  wise  men 


YESTERDAY    IN    IRELAND  117 

of  the  counting  house.  The  street  will  pass  judgment  on  our  enter- 
prises according  as  they  have  "succeeded"  or  "failed."  But  if 
one  can  feel  that  one  has  striven  faithfully  to  do  a  right  thing,  does 
not  one  stand  ultimately  justified,  no  matter  what  the  issue  of  one's 
attempt,   no  matter  what  the  sentence  of  the  street? 

By  such   teaching   he  commended   to  his  scholars, 
and    to   Ireland,   the    spirit   which   he  desired   to   see 
expressed  in  **  that  laughing  gesture  of  a  young  man 
that   is   going  into  battle   or   climbing   to  a  gibbet.'* 
Strange  country,  that  heis  the  gibbet  always  before  the 
eyes  and  almost  before  the  aspiration  of  its  idealists  ! 
It  was   so  yesterday— in  all   the  yesterdays — and   yet 
the    reason    is    plain.       All   the   aspirations    of    such 
idealists  have  been  regarded  as  criminal  by  the  class 
for   which   Miss  Somerville   and   her  cousin  speak — 
criminal    and    menacing    to   those   who,    holding  the 
power,  arrogated  to  themselves  a  monopoly  of  loyalty. 
They  have  always  conceived  of  Pearse  and  his  like  as 
thirsting  for  their  blood.     Miss  Edgeworth,  in  a  letter 
printed  for  the  first  time  in  Irish  Memories,  writes  : — 
**  I  fear  our  throats  will  be  cut  by  order  of  O'Connell 
and  Co.  very  soon."     We  know  enough  to-day  about 
O'Connell  to  realise  how  far  this  estimate  lay  from  the 
truth  of  things ;  yet  Miss  Somerville  herself  talks  about 
**  Parnell  and  his  wolf-pack."     Justin  McCarthy,  John 
Redmond,  Willie  Redmond — these  were  some  of  the 
wolves  who  presumably  wanted  to  tear  Miss  Somer- 
ville's  kindred  to  pieces.     That  is  where  the  change 
must   come;   there  must   be  among  the   gentry   some 
generous  understanding  of  Nationalist  leaders   before 
the  grave  has  closed  over   them.        Anyone  can   see 
what  is  bad  in  Sinn  Fein,  but  no  one  can  fight  that 
evil  effectively,  no  one  can  convert  to  better  uses  the 


118      IRISH  BOOKS  AND  IRISH  PEOPLE 

ill-guided  force  which  Sinn  Fein  represents,  until  he 
understands  what  is  best  in  it.  Sinn  Fein  has  largely 
replaced  a  movement  which,  in  its  later  phases,  dwelt 
perhaps  too  much  on  the  material  advantages  which 
it  offered  as  the  reward  of  support.  Sinn  Fein*s 
strength  has  lain  not  in  what  it  has  offered,  but  in 
what  it  has  cisked;  it  has  asked  for  devotion,  and 
Pearse  certainly  both  gave  that  and  received  it.  Such 
was  his  teaching,  and  I  do  not  know  a  better  saying 
for  the  Irish  gentry  to  ponder  over  than  the  last  sen- 
tence in  these  essays  of  his  :  '*  The  highest  thing  any- 
one can  do  is  to  serve.** 

That  temper  was  perhaps  lacking  in  the  Ireland  of 
yesterday  which  Miss  Somerville  so  lovingly  describes. 
To  command  loyalty  as  a  right,  to  reward  it  by  gene- 
rosity, by  indulgence — this  made  part  of  the  ideal  of 
leadership;  but  scarcely  to  be  laborious  either  in  ren- 
dering or  exacting  capable  work. 

The  old  way  of  life  was  good  for  children,  as 
Martin  Ross  describes  it  in  her  sketch  of  her  brother's 
upbringing. 

Everything  in  those  early  days  of  his  was  large  and  vigorous  ; 
tali  trees  to  climb,  great  winds  across  the  lake  to  wrestle  with, 
strenuous  and  capable  talk  upstairs  and  downstairs,  in  front  of 
furnaces  of  turf  and  logs,  long  drives  and  the  big  Galway  welcome 
at  the  end  of  them. 

But  for  the  grown  men,  it  lacked  one  thing :  effort. 
Pleasant  it  was;  lots  of  everything,  lots  of  hunting, 
lots  of  game  on  the  moors  and  bogs,  lots  of  fish  in  lake 
and  river,  lots  of  beef  and  mutton  on  the  farm,  lots  of 
logs  and  turf,  lots  of  space — above  all,  lots  of  time, 
and  always  the  spirit  for  a  spree  that  made  everyone 
**  prefer  good  fun  to  a  punctual  dinner.**     There  was 


YESTERDAY    IN    IRELAND  119 

only  one  deficiency  :  that  way  of  life  was  apt  to  be 
short  of  cash.  It  was,  in  short,  a  life  that  could  not 
pay  its  way.  The  **  big  Galway  welcome  "  is  just 
as  big  with  a  sounder  economic  system,  that  rests 
solidly  on  men's  own  work.  Anyone  who  knows 
Western  Ireland  can  tell  you  that  the  quality  of  work 
is  better  on  the  land  where  men  are  their  own  masters 
than  it  was  in  the  old  days.  Yet  even  there  we  are  not 
out  of  the  old  vicious  circle  of  under-pay  and  under- 
work ;  and  in  the  industrial  life  we  are  fully  entangled 
in  it.  But  here  also  the  revolutionary  as  schoolmaster 
has  appeared.  To  my  thinking  the  most  momentous 
apparition  in  Ireland  of  our  times  is  that  of  Mr.  Ford, 
who  is  paying  American  wage  rates  for  labour  in  Cork, 
and  calculating,  not  to  get  value  for  his  money  at  once, 
but  to  teach  labour  to  be  worth  it.  According  to  his 
gospel,  as  it  was  expounded  to  me,  you  will  not  get 
efficiency  by  offering  to  pay  the  wages  of  efficiency 
when  labour  becomes  efficient :  you  must  first  provide 
the  conditions  of  efficiency  and  then  teach,  just  as  in 
the  army  your  first  care  is  to  get  a  recruit  fit  and  your 
second  to  make  him  thorough  in  his  ground  work. 
That  is  the  practical  recognition  of  what  yesterday  in 
Ireland  failed  to  recognise. 

Nor  does  this  ideal  of  strenuous  and  capable  work 
exclude  either  the  strenuous  and  capable  talk  of  Martin 
Ross's  Galway  household  or  anything  else  that  was 
excellent  in  the  old  way.  Certainly  the  most  labo- 
rious and  the  most  prosperous  peasant  household  that 
I  have  ever  known  (and  for  many  months  I  was  part 
of  it)  was  the  most  thoroughly  and  traditionally  Irish, 
except  that  it  was  removed  by  one  generation  from 
Gaelic   speech.        But   the  whole   cast   of  mind   was 


120      IRISH  BOOKS  AND  IRISH  PEOPLE 

Gaelic,  remote  as  the  poles  from  that  **  newer  Ire- 
land "  which  is  in  revolt  against  all  tradition  of  autho- 
rity— and,  if  they  only  knew  it,  against  all  Irish  tradi- 
tion. Miss  Somerville  thinks,  as  a  page  in  her  book 
shows,  that  the  newer  Ireland  has  lost  the  endearing 
courtesy  which  is  imposed  by  the  genius  of  the  Gaelic 
tongue,  and  is  for  that  matter  to  be  found  in  every 
line  of  Pearse's  essays.  We  can  educate  back  to  that 
without  any  detriment;  we  can  be  as  efficient  and  as 
courteous  as  the  Japanese.  Another  thing  is  gone. 
Ireland  of  yesterday,  even  in  its  poverty,  was  a  merry 
country;  to-day,  even  in  its  prosperity,  it  is  full  of 
bitter,  mirthless  rancour  and  hate.  It  will  be  a  great 
thing  if  we  can  help  to  preserve  for  Ireland  the  exqui- 
site benediction  which  a  beggar  woman  in  Skibbereen 
laid  upon  Martin  Ross  :  **  Sure,  ye*re  always  laugh- 
ing !  That  ye  may  laugh  in  the  sight  of  the  glory  of 
Heaven." 

1918. 


Date  Due 

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